My Sister Rosalie, Book I: Captor
by geophf
Summary: Chapter 78: Well, Rosalie did say she'd ... God help me! And she want me to be grateful that she ... God. I'm in hell. I'm in hell, and she does whatever she wants to me, and I have to like it, or else she'll get really angry at me ... and not kill me. Help. Please, God, help! NSFW.
1. AN: Apologia et Synopses

**Apologia, or **_**raison d'être:**_

It is well-established that for most of the series the relationship was very strained between Rosalie and Bella. There are several excellent pieces of fiction that explore this relationship.

Two stand-outs: Cicatrix by Rhiann and Persephone's Fury by Angel Ren. This work is based on neither.

Also, since this story's original serialization, other Rosalie stories have come along, exploring her character, and her relationship with Bella, notably Rose Read by Jocelyn Torrent.

Their relationship has always been distant, no matter how heated Rosalie's feelings, in particular, were. A question that has come to me is this one: instead of skirting everything about each other — two ships passing in the night — what if they were given the option to confront these issues head-on? Could they work past their hate and ignorance and emerge not only as sisters, simply because you marry into your spouse's family, but as sisters because they now know more about the other than they know their own selves? That is, sisters who have laughed, played, fought and cried together and still love each other even though they drive each other crazy? What will it take for their relationship to reach that point? At what price does this relationship come?

**Book I Synopsis:**

Rosalie Lillian Hale had always been the center of attention and the object of every man's affection. Obviously. Now as a vampire, she was sure to sway the enigmatic Edward, wasn't she? How will she handle his disdain? And, when he courts a mere human girl, plain to boot, what will she do when her new family is out hunting with this sheriff's daughter who suspects too much about her own past and comes calling for her Edward?

**Era:**

This series begins _circa_ February, 1934. The era's significance is that this is Cullens, pre-Emmett.

**Locations:**

First, in the newly incorporated town of Ekalaka, Montana, then to the geographic center of the United States (today) near Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and then to parts elsewhere.

Yes, I am aware of the irony of the second location that is a composition of the meaning of Bella's name ("Belle" or "Beautiful") and her residence ("Fourche" or "Fork(s)"). I didn't choose it; it chose me.

**Background:**

The Cullens have decided to relocate to a less populated area of the United States after hastily departing Rochester, New York from a set of revenge killings Rosalie had exacted from the men who violated her and left her for dead. Rosalie has begun to emerge from her newborn phase, but still must be secluded from human contact until the redness from her own human blood in her eyes fades.

They have decided, for discretion's sake, to assume new names, but Rosalie holds steadfastly to her own. After an extended debate, she allows the address by her middle name, Lillian, so Carlisle and Esme take 'Hale' as their last name, and Rosalie poses as Carlisle's younger sister. Edward poses as Esme's younger brother, taking Esme's maiden name of 'Platt' as his own.

This series is AU ('alternate universe') in that both the time and location are different than that of the novels, thrusting the characters to confront each other under very different circumstances, but otherwise the other elements are canonical: Bella's mind is opaque to Edward's gift, and her blood sings to him, and is, in general, more appealing to other vampires than most humans' blood. Also, Rosalie is extremely proud of everything about herself. Thankfully.

**POV:**

This series is told from the perspective of the character who starts with the identity of Bella Swan, then is known only as _girl_ and then earns an entirely new name.

* * *

**Table of chapter synopses:**

**Chapter 1** — "A/N: Apologia": Author's note. The reason behind the story "My Sister Rosalie" and a recitation of each chapter's synopsis.

**Chapter 2 **— "From Rochester": February 1934, The newly incorporated town of Ekalaka, Montana was about to receive four new residents: the 'Hales' from Rochester, New York. They were beautiful, polite, but distant, and Bella Swan, the sheriff's daughter, couldn't help but notice Mrs. Hale's brother, a young Mr. Edward Platt.

**Chapter 3** — "Ekalaka Tour": Sheriff Swan introduces Dr. Hale and Edward Platt around town. In a surprising reversal, Edward is interested and engaging. Afterwards, Bella, encouraged by his attention, slyly suggests to her father a house-warming visit to check on the Hales.

**Chapter 4** — "House Warming Gift": Sheriff Swan and Bella give a house-warming gift to the Hales, surprising them. Being neighborly, Bella asks to visit the bed-ridden 'Lillian' Hale.

**Chapter 5** — "A Ghost": Bella's visit with 'Lillian' Hale is brief but powerful, as she finds herself wanting in comparing herself to the preternaturally beautiful and unaccountably hostile newcomer.

**Chapter 6** — "New York Headlines": It's amazing what one can dig up in archived newspapers! Unfortunately for Bella Swan, the news doesn't _answer_ questions about their new residents, it _uncovers even more_ of them. Just when her life is interesting enough, Edward visits the courthouse to ask Sheriff Swan if he may call on Bella some evening. Bella seems willing enough to allow this.

**Chapter 7** — "Self Invitation": In the interim days awaiting Edward's visit, Bella contemplates her own identity, asking questions about her own self now. Edward calls on the Swans, then Bella invites herself to the 'Hale' residence the following day, pushing past all objections, to secure another visit with 'Lillian'.

**Chapter 8** — "A Visit and Investigation": Nervousness. Bella deals with it in her horse and in herself as she visits the Hale invalid. Although initially distant at the thought of _her Edward_ going to the Swan's for dinner, 'Lillian' becomes very excited at the thought of having Bella for dinner at the Hale's, instead. After the visit, Bella does some digging at the library, finding more surprises about the newcomers.

**Chapter 9** — "Gift of Flowers": February 1934, Bella recuperates from her attack of nerves and receives a surprising gift and a not-so-surprising well-wisher.

**Chapter 10** — "Rosalie Revealed": February, 1934, Hale residence, a faked death? a faked name? Bella didn't know what Lillian/Rosalie was hiding, but she swore to get to the bottom of it. She did. Rosalie couldn't have been happier. Some stones are better left unturned.

**Chapter 11** — "On the Run": February, 1934, Rosalie takes Bella for a rather compulsory stroll and gives a cryptic answer to every one of her questions. The gist of the conversation seems that Bella now needs to die. Bella disagrees.

**Chapter 12** — "A Swim": February, 1934, unknown forest hours from Ekalaka. Rosalie finally hears reason and lets Bella go. Or something like that. Too bad Bella smells so tasty, and not just to vampires! Oh, and swimming in February? Not such a great idea.

**Chapter 13** — "Haute Couture": Rescuing a fragile human _through _a wolf can leave clothes rather icky, especially if you're a vampire. What to do? But there's a whole new problem making the fashion handicap suddenly trivial. Time to hunt. Fourth time this week, dammit!

**Chapter 14** — "No Talking to Vampires!": Food everywhere, but Bella can't eat it. Her clothes, all of them, were bloodied in the recent wolf encounter and are now gone. And let's not talk about her period, please? How could it get worse? Hint: don't provoke an irritated vampire.

**Chapter 15** — "Tree Hugger": Me? Hug trees? I'd rather be waltzing at a cotillion than be caught dead — ha-ha — by a forest cabin. What next? Wear flannel and grow my hair long? Oops, doing that, too. Sigh! Trot out the painted baby seals ... mmm, seal: yummy!

**Chapter 16** — "Ignorant Assumptions": I didn't know I could court death so many times in one day. Well, this would be the second day for that dance. I didn't know an indestructible vampire would hurt so much. And I didn't know I would be the cause of it. Again, and again.

**Chapter 17** — "Dreams": Dammit! Why did I say anything? I'm a Hale. It's _human._ It _knows!_ It _must die_. This is the _LAW!_ She'd forgive me with her big doe eyes as I killed her, too. I've killed plenty of doe before. Why does it hurt thinking about killing this one?

**Chapter 18** — "Next Rest Stop: 1 Mile": You know, you'd really think I'd learn something from the last time I left Rosalie to forge my own way through the snow, right? But when there's no vampire in sight, and a girl's gotta go ... Walking in snow with socks was a problem, though.

**Chapter 19** — "Walking in Sunshine": Stupid human! Telling me the best way to kill her. As if I needed the advice. And then rhapsodizing about her stupid _sweet BLOOD!_ Hunting. Again. I HATE HER! Wait. What's this? She's outside walking through the snow _IN SOCKS?_ Stupid human.

**Chapter 20** — "A Question": She keeps saving my life, but whenever she's around, Death keeps calling for me. Once? Twice? Maybe a coincidence. But four times in one week? How do I ask the question? I wonder how she'll take it. Like everything else? One way to find out.

**Chapter 21** — "Scary Monsters": Gratitude. I didn't expect it. I've saved her life 4 times; I've hunted 6 times this week. For her. But this: "play with my food"? This needs to be corrected. Now. Ah? Oh! her scent. _Her BLOOD!_ Just one little sip won't hurt her, will it?

**Chapter 22** — "Compulsion": Bella. Come back to me. I will wrap you in a white blanket and hold you. Forever. You are of this world, Bella. Rosalie is not. Leave her. She does not love you. I do. Stay. And I will love you forever. Forever and ever.

**Chapter 23** — "Rosalie Needs a Guy Like Me": You know, Rosalie's all, like, ya know, _Rosalie_, but she's really nice once you get to know her. What she _needs_ is someone to laugh with her instead of fight with her. A guy like me. That is, if I were a guy. _Man! _Her voice sure tastes good!

**Chapter 24 **— "Rain by a Rose Garden": Sheriff Swan and Bella stop by the Hale residence on their tour of Carter county and ... wait ... what? _Oh, God, please! Please_ just let the morning come! I don't want to die again; not for the third time today!

**Chapter 25 **— "Breakfast Time for the Human": A complete enigma. One moment, she's clinging desperately to my shirt, begging me to kill her first before I leave her, and the next she's storming off into the forest — not in socks this time, but in _bare feet_ — to scream bloody murder at the trees. I have to keep my distance for her own safety and stability; getting too close to her just hurts her too much.

**Chapter 26 **— "What is Lunch? Stake! ... geddit?" She loves me; she loves me not. Oh! She loves me not. Oh, well. Who cares? But then: red steak, red wine, red ... blood? Good thing she already had lunch. My day couldn't get any better! ... I hated always being right.

**Chapter 27** — "Essay Quiz Grade: F": She said she didn't drink human blood, but she didn't say anything about my soul. I didn't know I had one, until she started consuming it. I guess my shouting at her counted as "our conversation". I wonder if my body would keep breathing after she ate my soul?

**Chapter 28** — "Smart Girl": Austen? Read it. Complete romantic drivel. But then the girl describes herself exactly, calling herself Lizzy, and me exactly as her older sister and faints dead away for no reason at all. Wait. 'Calls herself Lizzy'? Oh, my goodness! _FINALLY!_

**Chapter 29 **— "The Wager": You know, there should be a 'vampire handbook'. Do's and Don't's. Like: 1. Don't say the 'V' word, 2. Bring spare pads, and 3. Never-never-never bet on anything. Especially a sure-win bet. I wish I had read that handbook before now.

**Chapter 30 **— "The Promise": She fell for it. Humans, with their skin temperature, iris dilation, and heart rate can be so easy to read and to manipulate. Maybe I'm starting to understand this inscrutable being? But for sure, she _will_ start to comprehend herself. Starting tonight.

**Chapter 31 **— "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall": She said she wasn't going to torture me. I thought I could last through anything for seven seconds. But not this. Not this.

**Chapter 32 **— "Look Who's Talking": _Mission accomplished._ How do you feel, _vampire_, now that she hates you? Feels pretty good, crushing a sweet, innocent girl's soul like that? She'll probably lead the mob to burn you at the stake, torch in hand. I hope she does. _I deserve it!_

**Chapter 33 **— "My New TODO List": "Oh, _vampire _me; lonely_ vampire _me; leave me alone, L-..." Why does _she_ get to call herself vampire? Wait a minute ... "lonely"? And did she just call me "L-something"? "L-something" what?

**Chapter 34 **— "First Bath": This is much worse than I thought it would be. Much worse. How do I keep cold and distant? I must. But how do I do that when she doesn't even have the confidence to look in a mirror? She cannot believe what she said about herself ... can she?

**Chapter 35 **— "With the Depression On": I seem to remember some girl wishing Rosalie could speak again so we could have a conversation. If you see that girl, could you send her my way? I have a few words for her.

**Chapter 36 **— "This Will Hurt — I: Ice Knives": A three way tie. Either the malnutrition, or the hypothermia, … or I would kill her. I could only handle one problem at a time, and the most pressing one was the most dangerous one: me. As always. But if I didn't do something about her scent right now …

**Chapter 37 **— "This Will Hurt — II: King Midas": Wow! She stayed! She said she couldn't, but she did! Even after my embarrassing dream that she heard. And she's going to tell me a story! I hope it has a happy ending …

**Chapter 38 **— "This Will Hurt — III: Killing Rosalie": Dead. She called me dead ... _spitefully_. She's right. She's always right, even when she's so very wrong. Well, I had wanted this. I had wanted her to see the monster I am. And now, she does. I _had_ wanted this.

**Chapter 39 **— "Just Say It": Flowers. Blueberries. Well, not blueberries, but both for me. Well, not for me. Dammit! I'm going to tell her. I _have_ to tell her. Right now. I don't care what she thinks: I have to tell her I love her.

**Chapter 40 **— "Rule Number One": Why is it that every trip to the bathroom has to be this, like, life-or-death, world-altering ... thingie? _And_ I have to behave like a lady while this is all happening? So much for Rosalie's suggestion of a relaxing walk!

**Chapter 41 **— "Egg Came First": I feel it: that fissure in the marble. The crack is spreading. I'm doomed. She's doomed. I don't know how much longer I can fight. And she looks so _happy,_ wanting to care for _me._ Poor girl.

**Chapter 42 **— "Vampire Cook Book": _What?_ Why are you screaming:_ "Don't do it, Bella!"_ Rosalie didn't say I couldn't read her book. Besides, who are you, anyway, to tell me what to do? I've got a vampire doing that to me already, so I don't need your help here, thank you very much.

**Chapter 43 **— "Tickle, Tickle!": I was only tickling her to hear that sad girl laugh for once. _That's all._ But then her look implied so much more. Then she invites me into her_bed?_ With that look? No, she is an innocent. She cannot know. But if I join her in that bed ...

**Chapter 44 **— "Sleep With Me": Rosalie just has to stop opening up a little tiny bit and then shutting right down like this. She just has to stop running away. She has to. She just has to. She's only hurting herself when she does this. Well, more than just herself, but ...

**Chapter 45 **— "Quid Pro Quo": I don't know what runs through her head, so I don't know what she'll ask, but I know it'll be insightful, even if it's so very far off. Then how will I answer? Will she see the truths beneath my lies? Like she always does? Can she see into my soul as she sees into the sanskrit? Why can she so easily penetrate my façade with those big doe eyes of hers when I can't even begin to fathom the well of her sadness?

**Chapter 46 **— "Heaven and Hell": Because Rosalie wants me to go _where?_

**Chapter 47** — "What Does the 'H' Stand For?": So God's Name is like this big deal. So what. I still don't see why that gives Rosalie the right to whack me for saying the 'J' word. AND I bet she has no idea what the 'H' stands for. I'd ask her, to show her up, but then she's probably just whack me again.

**Chapter 48** — "A Bottle of Scotch": Wow! That voice in the forest _did_ lie to me; my dreams _can_ be wrong about somethings. I wonder what else I'm wrong about. Well, that is ... besides everything ...

**Warning:** This chapter contains forceful use of profanity and references and implications to violence.

**Chapter 49** — "Cinderella": I swear to God! The next fairy tale Rosalie tells me ...

**Chapter 50** — "Lillian, Arise!": She finally said it. She said she loves me. I thought she didn't, but she's saying she does. She's holding my hand in her soft, warm hand. Wait. Why are we floating above the snow? Why doesn't her hand feel cold?

**Chapter 51** — "Take me": What was I going to do? If she fell off my lap, with her luck, she would probably give herself serious head trauma. I wasn't in the bed with her, so this was okay ... wasn't it?

**Chapter 52** — "A Hair": I really, really, really didn't know that combing her hair could ... well, I just wish I could do something right for once, is all.

**Chapter 53** — "School in Session": She held me ... while I cried. She held me.

**Chapter 54** — "Learning Signs": She remembers last night. All of it. And, with what happened this morning ... couldn't I have stopped myself? I don't know anymore. This is not going according to plan. Not at all.

**Chapter 55** — "Beautiful": "This is how I'll do it," she told me so tenderly, holding my face in her hands.

**Chapter 56** — "Nagging/Regrets": I see it, in her eyes. She works things over and over in her head. Every time she asks a question, it hits the mark. She finds this work exhausting, but what about me? I have to do all her work, and then I have to answer her. And I have to not care. And not long to look at her as she thinks. She's merely human, after all. Why should I care? I see it ... in her eyes

**Chapter 57** — "Spontaneity and Confidence": Least-ways she could've acknowledged that I used the word 'spontaneity' so ... well: spontaneously, but no, she's all like ... well, _Rosalie_ ... then, she's, you know? ... silly, and then I'm, like, silly, and I thought we were having fun. Honestly, I thought we were having fun._ God, _I'm so stupid. Like: there's a news flash.

**Chapter 58 **—"Baseball: First Base": I _do not_ remember when I went to the field with Pa seeing baseball played this way. Unfortunately, I don't think Rosalie cares. Her game, her rules. Oh: her game is _me. _I just figured that out, ... much too late.

**Chapter 59** — "Baseball: Second Base": I could say 'I don't even know why I'm doing this,' but I know myself too well. If I destroy her, then she will hate me for the monster I am. I always have to be right. I always push it. I always go too far. And she always has forgiven me ... until now, that is.

**Chapter 60** — "Baseball: a Pickle": "I withdraw the question!" I declared so bravely to her. That was supposed to work. That always works in the talkies. How come is doesn't work here?

**Chapter 61** — "Why?": Well, I said it. Kinda. God, I'm such a wimp.

**Chapter 62** — "Equals": "Uh, so when you say we're 'equals,' Rosalie, um, what exactly do you mean?" I asked as I looked in the eyes of my 'equal.' Yeah, so we're equals, now. Isn't that nice? I'll wake up from this dream, soon, I'm sure.

**Chapter 63** — "Safe Side": Here I am, nice and safe, on the "safe side," and I get to watch how Rosalie's life is destroyed, second by second, and see how sweet, little, innocent me was the one to do this to her.

**Chapter 64** — "The Choice": She _missed it?_ After I had _Edward-fag-boi-Cullen _in me? Dis_gust_ing! So that means I have to do this ... _again?_ Well, she won't miss it this time, thank God! There's no way I'll do it a third time. No. Wait... She's backsliding now? Wonderful.

**Chapter 65** — "A Little Too Hot": When Rosalie holds me against her body like that... Okay, so like she's cold, right? And you know when you have something really cold against your tummy for a while ... Wait, I didn't mean she's _cold!_ I mean: she is hot. I mean... um, my cheeks are burning, aren't they? Can you not look at me, please?

**Chapter 66 **— "Schadenfreude": So, now would be the perfect time to tell her, wouldn't it? Seeing as I've so utterly ruined everything else I've touched. Why not? Nothing left. Nothing in me. Just this one last thing so she can laugh in my face at my misery, and I can tunnel into some rock and just stay there, contemplating my perfect navel forever. Joy.

**Chapter 67 **— "Sisters: I — Picking Flowers and Fights": What do sisters do? I had no idea. I never had a sister. Nor did Rosalie, so I guess she didn't know either. But I guess, watching us, it became pretty clear: they go skipping across the snow, right? Yeah, right. They fight a lot, too.

**Chapter 68 **— "Yes": The way Rosalie said 'yes' like that. I wanted that. I so wanted that my body ached. I wanted to look into her eyes and feel connected, just like this, and feel her _very being_ say 'yes' like that to me.

**Chapter 69** — "Sisters: II — Not a Little Girl": Okay, we're here, two girls in chapter 69 of my journal. What do two girls alone in the woods do in chapter 69? Huh? Why are you looking at me like that? Girls talk! What were _you_ thinking, you pervs! And git your grubby hands off my very private journal!

**Chapter 70 **— "Sisters: III — Little One": Fuck. FuckfuckfuckFUCKfuck! FUCK! I almost said it. I almost God-damn said it to her. God damn fainting right into my arms, exposing her neck like that, and then GIVING ME HER GOD-DAMN PLEADING EYES! Fuck. Please, God: take her. Before I do.

**Chapter 71 **— "Fucked": _'Lie, lie! Oh, God! Please, for the love of heaven, please LIE!' _Inside my head, my voice was telling me exactly what Rosalie was begging me to do, for my own sake. But could I do that? Could I listen to sense _and_ to what Rosalie was saying? No, of course not. Not me. Oh, God, I'm so fucked.

**Chapter 72 **— "Breathing": What's the one thing that tells you you're alive? Breathing, right? So, the trick is to keep breathing. If I kept breathing, I could make it through this. But then I saw _her_, sitting there, waiting. And I knew I was dead, because breathing ...? What's that?

**Chapter 73 **— "_totus tuus_": I am hers. She can do with me whatever she wants. And she is my Rose. _Warning: _graphic and gratuitous depiction of physical punishment. NSFW.

**Chapter 74 **— "A Rose by Any Other Name": What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet... or so I've heard. A Rosalie by any other name, likes, say: _'Rose' _would be just as bi-... _bossy! I was gonna say 'bossy,' I swear!_

**Chapter 75 **— "If I were a boy...": So. My little one thinks she can ask me out on a date ... and _as a boy?_ This'll be... interesting. Hm. But I wonder, if she did, given different circumstances, given none of this having happened, would I give her the time of day? Or the brush off? Or ... worse? A poor sheriff's daughter asking Rosalie Hale out? She wouldn't've stood a chance, the poor girl. After all, I'm not Vera to stoop so low. Which means I would've ended up with Royce. Again.

When I say, 'the poor girl,' whom do I mean?

**Chapter 76 **— "...but I'm not a boy": So what do you do when Rosalie Hale tells you 'no' when you ask her out? Get on with your life, right? No surprises there, so who cares? But what do you when you tell Rosalie Hale 'no' when she asks you out? Heh. Who could be that stupid, right? Yeah, who? Yeah.

**Chapter 77 **— "Lying": It's ironic, isn't it? That she called me her hope, when what I see in her is that she is the one whose inner purity shines forth, untouched, even by the blackness of my soul. It's ironic, isn't it, that she's unable to move, unable to care for herself, but still she reaches out to me, to make sure I'm 'okay.' Did God make her selfless to allow me to be selfish? This sophistry is getting me nowhere but closer to damning her. Her goodness only makes me hate the evil that is me all the more.

**Chapter 78 **— "Privileges": Well, Rosalie did say she'd ... God help me! And she want me to be _grateful_ that she ... God. I'm in hell. I'm in hell, and she does whatever she wants to me, and I have to like it, or else she'll get _really _angry at me ... and _not_ kill me. Help. Please, God, help! NSFW.


	2. From Rochester

**Chapter summary:** February 1934, The newly incorporated town of Ekalaka, Montana was about to receive four new residents: the 'Hales' from Rochester, New York. They were beautiful, polite, but distant, and Bella Swan, the sheriff's daughter, couldn't help but notice Mrs. Hale's brother, a young Mr. Edward Platt.

* * *

Something was very different about the strangers who came into town today. Well, of course, 'strange' could describe anyone who would be moving into Ekalaka; we were about as far from Butte or Great Falls as you could get and still be in Montana, but we rather liked it that way. Sure, we didn't have the convenience stores and such that they had, but we didn't have the crime they had, either. That suited my Pa just fine, being the Sheriff of Carter county. Keeping the peace wasn't the most arduous job in the world here, but there was plenty else to do. The county was relatively new with nearly 3,000 people here, and we had a court house, now, too. Lots to do, establishing a county just over ten years old. We even had a school house, not that you'd catch me there. I told Pa I knew more than Mr. Hoffmann knew already. I could read well enough on my own.

Ma went Back East years ago and found herself another man. Not that I blame her. You could go stir crazy if you expected Town. Besides, if you didn't have the necessities, then the Sears-Roebuck catalogue, and a good deal of patience for the wait of the delivery, would get you what you needed. That wasn't enough for Ma, so she moved back. But I stayed on — Pa needed my help: he took care of the county, and I took care of him.

So, not exactly New York City, nor Rochester, as these folks had come from, but that's why people moved out here and stayed here. Actually, a good third of the population were still sore over the renaming of their "New Amsterdam", and so we had the Friday Fish-Fries and Oktoberfests (which actually started in September). So, when Dr. and Mrs. Hale pulled up in their brand spanking new 1934 Dodge 4-door sedan, there were sure to be a few eyebrows raised. I'm sure there was a gasoline station every three miles back in New York, but we had enough trouble with our one road. Walking or horse-back were the surest ways to get around here. When the Kuntz's ordered the Model 40 Ford (to be delivered come summer), Pa started having conniptions about all the traffic-related injuries he would have to deal with as Sheriff.

That Mrs. Hale's brother, a Mr. Edward Platt, stepped one foot into the courthouse, gave me one black glare, and then turned right back around without so much as a how-do-ye-do surely didn't help matters any, no matter how much the good doctor tried to smooth things over with protestations about the long journey and medical conditions.

They did all look awfully pale, and travel-worn, so maybe there was something in that.

The Dr. and Mrs. Hale were polite to a fault, however. They had big-city manners, which made Pa really uncomfortable — and I'm glad they were talking to him because I couldn't imagine putting two words together to make any sense looking at them — but you could tell that they were sincere; they weren't putting on airs. Well, at least they were all kindness: they introduced themselves, registering themselves as purchasing an outlying homestead that had fallen into disrepair since its abandonment from before Ekalaka was incorporated. They literally bought the property for a song. They also mentioned they were the guardians of Mr. What-is-his-problem Platt (who was mighty full of himself at the tender age of 17 years; I was that old, and I didn't see the need to turn my nose up at everything _I_ saw) and Dr. Hale's sister, Lillian.

Lillian Hale. Now why did that name ring a bell? I put that thought out of my mind when Dr. Hale mentioned she was recovering from consumption and wouldn't be up and about for at least a month. Oh, the poor girl!

They had rather unusual Christian names: Carlisle, Esme, and Lillian. Well, Lillian wasn't all that odd, and Mr. Dark-Glare had nothing unusual about his _name,_ I had to admit. Oddities, or not, it would be good to have a doctor in easy reach. Dr. Hale requested, after they had some time today and tomorrow to settle in, that Pa take him around town to introduce him to the neighbors and businesses. That would be a short tour, but polite of him, none-the-less. Tomorrow evening at 5 o'clock was agreed to.

We closed shop as they drove off. Very nice car. It was dark already, as it always is in the dead of winter. I tried not to think of the Hales as I prepared supper for Pa and me, but they kept creeping back into my mind. _No sense on thinking about that Edward Platt, Bella!_ I scolded myself. He was a real looker, but he made it plain that he wouldn't trouble himself with me again. The Carter County boys were all nice enough, in that sturdy Montana way, I suppose, so there was no sense on a girl dwelling on something that wasn't going to happen. Today was the last I'd be seeing of Edward Platt, and that was fine by me.


	3. Ekalaka Tour

**Chapter summary:** Sheriff Swan introduces Dr. Hale and Edward Platt around town. In a surprising reversal, Edward is interested and engaging. Afterwards, Bella, encouraged by his attention, slyly suggests to her father a house-warming visit to check on the Hales.

* * *

Well, I suppose a girl can be wrong about a thing or two. At 5 pm sharp Dr. Hale shows up, but, lo and behold, there was Edward Platt, the perfect gentleman today. He sure knew how to turn on the charms in general to Pa and the people he met, but he seemed to spend most of his attention, in our walk around town, on me.

It was very flattering.

He did look _much_ better: the circles were mostly gone from under his eyes. I suppose he was just cranky — _really cranky_ — yesterday, but he surely made up for it today: giving way, asking about the town and about Pa, and me.

It just didn't make sense. I'm nothing to look at, but that's all he did: look at me ... intensely. It wasn't rude, or leering, so as to make a girl uncomfortable. Actually, it did make me a bit uncomfortable, because it was a look like he was trying to figure me out, and he kept being surprised at the things he was discovering.

I didn't really see myself as a surprising girl, either. In fact, I would describe myself as a 'no-nonsense' kind of girl; taking care of Pa kind of required that. I could put 2 and 2 together, which also surprised him, but I could tell he was really smart. I mean _really_ smart: he had seen more of the world than me, had an education that was both philosophical and pragmatic at the same time, and had read more than me, to boot, but he was also surprised I could cite his quotations from literature ... we shared a passion for reading it seemed, although I preferred Victorian novels, such as Brontë, Eliot, Austen, he tended to read more of the classics: Plato, Homer, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare — I teased him about the last one: why did he decide to go all so modern with an Elisabethian late-comer? He refused to be baited, and he refused to tease me back about my reading choices. I was sure he would attack my light reading after hearing his reading list — for goodness sake! — but he was all interestedness and politeness.

Edward Platt, your all-around Renaissance Man, right here in Carter County.

Pa introduced Dr. Hale and Edward around and showed them the sights, and the tour ended all too quickly for my taste. Folks around here, being for the most part of good Germanic stock, were proud of their education, but they didn't let that get in their way of the day-to-day business of surviving. Conversations around here didn't usually involve mental gymnastics. But talking with Edward had been confusing, and frustrating, and, well, a pleasure: a thing to remember and to reflect upon. Add that on top of how his voice sounded as he formed his thoughts into words, and the strength of his looks from his captivating eyes, and I knew I had things to think about for quite a while. A very pleasant change from the other conversations I've had up until now, which could only be described as predictable and forgettable.

And whatever cologne he was wearing made being around him a lot easier. Not that he needed any help in that department. But I was glad he wasn't of the mind that 'natural boy smell' was at all attractive. I wondered, self-consciously, what I smelled like to him. He made no comment one way or the other, but if I hadn't heard him talking with me and asking all those questions, I could have sworn he wasn't breathing at all.

Dr. Hale and Edward thanked us for the tour and bade us good night. _Well, that was that._ I reflected ruefully as we closed up shop. But then a thought occurred to me as Pa and I were eating supper: "Pa, it was nice of the Hales to come around like that. I wonder how they're doing setting up house."

"Hmm. Yeah, Bella, we should probably give them a little welcome-to-Ekalaka house-warming kind of gift." I could see Pa thought that was a great idea: he could see how they were settling in, and show them this town could be friendly and neighborly to the new comers.

I went to bed smug that night, pleased both that I was going to be able to see that Edward Platt again, and that Pa practically ordered me to do it, volunteered to chaperone, and thought the idea was his own.

Too bad I wasn't a gambling girl, because I loved winning trifectas like this and did so quite often. But, this was Ekalaka, not Butte. I sighed into sleep, happy with my winnings, anyway.


	4. House Warming Gift

**Chapter summary:** Sheriff Swan and Bella give a house-warming gift to the Hales, surprising them. Being neighborly, Bella asks to visit the bed-ridden 'Lillian' Hale.

* * *

Pa and I called on the Hales just after noon. I had prepared a pan of corn bread as a welcoming gift, and we rode there: me on Dolly, a steady appy mare — she was good, you know, for me — and Pa on Patches, a Pinto. It's kind of funny thinking of Pa riding on Patches, a horse bred for battle, because if there was ever a man of peace, it would be Pa. But Patches and Pa had been riding together for years, they knew each other well. Patches knew he couldn't get away with anything with Pa's firm hand, and Pa knew Patches would have no problems taking me for a ride. So, it was easy-going Dolly for me.

Except she wasn't so easy-going today for some reason. As we got closer to the Hales, both Dolly and Patches became more skittish. We dismounted at the edge of Hale's property, securing the horses to hitching posts there. Once they knew they no longer needed to proceed, both horses settled down a bit.

How odd!

We walked the rest of the way, which wasn't very far, and knocked at the door. Dr. Hale answered and opened the door: "Ah! Sheriff Swan, Miss Swan, please do come in!" He immediately stepped back, inviting us in.

Pa answered: "Dr. Hale, please, it's just 'Charlie'. Bella and I thought to call on you and see how you were moving in. I hope this isn't a bad time?"

"No, no, no. Not at all; please do sit down." His protestation was all a matter of form, but was there just a hint of strain around his eyes?

I looked around the house before sitting on a large couch facing inward. It still needed a lot of work, but the Hales had been very busy. The exterior needed a paint job, but the overgrowth had been cleared away, and the lawn was trimmed, even. The interior was even better: the living room was arranged with furniture, and it looked like they were changing the layout of the house to make room for what appeared to be a music room. A grand piano peeked out prominently from what used to be a dividing wall which was now partially knocked down. Their furniture had arrived several weeks before they did, but still ...

"You certainly didn't waste any time unpacking!" Awe touched my voice.

Musical laughter responded from the adjoining kitchen as Mrs. Hale came out to sit next to her husband. "Why, thank you, dear!" With her voice, I wondered if she was a soloist. I quickly closed my gaping mouth — _great first impression, country girl!_ I berated myself — and offered my corn bread: "Mrs. Hale, so nice to see you again. I made a little something as a house-warming gift." She accepted it gracefully, "How kind of you!" and brought it to the kitchen.

But then she returned, empty-handed. I looked over at Pa, and he returned my glance. No offer of tea or coffee to go with the bread? Even if they had just eaten, that lack seemed a little unneighborly. There was an awkward silence. I looked to Pa to recover the situation, but he was never much a talker, and, on top of that, never comfortable in social settings.

That's my Pa: Sheriff Smoothie.

"I also wanted to meet your sister, Dr. Hale. I hope, under your care, she's recovering well?" I know there was at least once when it wasn't "Bella to the rescue", but don't ask me to nail down the date and time.

The Hales exchanged a glance. "Oh, yes, she's improving," Dr. Hale answered without the slightest pause, "but she's currently not in the condition to leave her bed. I'm afraid she's not much for company now."

Hm. Not much for company, but fine for traveling cross-country? Something didn't sit right. "Oh, that's quite all right, Doctor, I'll just peek my head in and say hello. I'm sure she's dying of boredom, being cooped up in her room. One little minute can't hurt, right? It may actually improve her spirits." I stood up, determined.

Dr. Hale didn't look particularly pleased with this turn of events, and Pa looked downright uncomfortable. "Bella," he whispered, "if the girl's not ..." But I hissed "Pa!" and shot him down with a glare and a shake of my head before turning to Dr. Hale with a warm, but firm, smile. Both Dr. and Mrs. Hale rose, and Pa, belatedly, with them.

"You may visit for just one minute only, then, Miss Swan. But I'll ask you to speak with her quietly: she has migraine headaches, so bright lights and loud noises, even at normal speaking tones, can cause her intense pains. It would be better if you went by yourself, Miss Swan, so as to not exhaust her, if that's all right with you, Charlie."

I didn't wait for Pa's blessings, "Thank you so much, Dr. Hale, if you'll just point the way ..."

"I'll bring you, Miss Swan." I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was Edward, magically appearing by the doorway to the music room. Granted, most of that room was obscured from view, but it had been deathly quiet in there. I wouldn't have guessed there was a soul alive in there, but Edward's sudden appearance said otherwise.

I restarted my heart and tried to sound casual: "Thank you, Mr. Platt, and please call me 'Bella'." It was hard to talk casually with him looking like that. It was hard to talk _at all_ with him looking at me _that way_. I forced my mouth to grin pleasantly.

"I will do so, if you call me 'Edward'." He grinned back pleasantly, too, but I'm willing to bet his grin worked so much better on me than mine did on him.

"Well, then, _Edward_, please lead the way"

"My pleasure, Bella." Oooh, he was so comfortably smug! "Please follow me," and he headed off down the hall into the living area. I reminded my legs how to move in order to follow him. At the end of the hallway, he turned to me, pressing his finger to his lips, and knocked softly on one of the doors and whispered, "Lillian, we have a guest who would like to visit you."

"Come in." was the weak reply. Weak, but, was the entire family musical? And how did she hear Edward through the door, when I barely could standing right next to him? Edward opened the door just enough for me to slip by him — my pulse raced at our proximity — and into the darkened room. He quickly followed closing the door behind him.

And there, in a four-poster bed, probably king sized, because I had never seen a bed so large, sat Lillian Hale.


	5. A Ghost

**Chapter summary:** Bella's visit with 'Lillian' Hale is brief but powerful, as she finds herself wanting in comparing herself to the preternaturally beautiful and unaccountably hostile newcomer.

* * *

It was hard for me to decide who was the more beautiful: Edward or Lillian. It seemed, paradoxically enough, that Dr. Hale and Mrs. Hale had both married up. Edward was rapier sharp, both in mind and in his well-chiseled body, handsome beyond compare, but Lillian ...

Even though the lighting was dimmed, I had never seen someone as beautiful as Lillian. Her hair was long, blond, with an ever-so-slight wave to it that teased into a curl at the very end. A girl in bed should not be allowed to have hair as this. Her face set the Norwegian girls looks to shame. And speaking of looks, which I didn't want to because my plain ones suffered in comparison, from what I could see of her upright position on the bed, she had a perfect hourglass figure, with a bosom that would make the boys in town forget that she had a face ... if that was possible, because her full, pouting lips would be calling them to romance. The boys would be checking their brains at the door, what little of them that they had, as her eyes drunk their eyes drinking her in.

Everything about her screamed her perfection, and my lack.

And her eyes: they were the strangest color. Almost the same color as Edward's hair: yellow, with flecks of red? Bronze-ish? Hazel-Brown? Rusty gold? Was there such a thing as 'part albino'? Both families were very pale, and it was hard to tell in this light if Lillian was pure snow white. She looked it. But didn't albinos have blood red eyes? I guessed Lillian had red in her eyes, but they were yellowish-red, not orange, and not pure red like an albino's were supposed to be. And weren't albino's hair color bleached, too? I wasn't sure. But what I was sure of was that Lillian was terrifyingly, soul-crushingly, beautiful. She was simply the most beautiful woman in the world. All I could do was stand there and gape like the complete idiot that I was.

Edward rescued me. I sent a silent prayer of gratitude for his gallantry. "Lillian," he murmured quietly, "this is Bella, who is Sheriff Swan's daughter. She and her father showed your brother and me around town last night."

Lillian looked me up and down dismissively. No, her eyes weren't exactly dismissive; there was an edge to them: they were hard ... hate-filled. I wished I could have turned into a cockroach and crawled away; that would have been an improvement as to how I felt now.

"So, this is the erudite Bella Swan that you've been talking about, Edward." I could hear the sneer underneath her melodious pleasantry.

"How nice to meet you."

I doubted that.

"Ummm." And the award for the wittiest répartée goes to ... Bella Swan! Thank you. Thank you all so much. No applause, please, just throw money.

Edward, again. "Bella wished to see how you are recovering and offer any assistance. Right, Bella?"

He said this quietly, but did I hear a smile in his voice?

"Ummm, yes?" Speaking still seems to be a rather difficult concept to grasp in the face of such a presence. She stunned me. I felt her physically overwhelming my senses. It was like what Edward did to me the first day he glared at me. She was doing the same thing, but, unlike Edward, who let me recover by leaving the courthouse, she wasn't going anywhere. I was a sparrow transfixed by a cobra.

She looked me over again. And, again, I felt altogether wanting. Then she looked over to Edward questioningly, then back to me.

I heard Edward exhale quietly as she answered. "That's very kind of you, Bella." She said this, strangely enough, with a twinge of sadness. "Now, I must apologize, but if you'll excuse me, but I need to rest." She did look very tired, so I murmured an 'of course' and stepped out of her room. Edward accompanied me back to the sitting room, lost in his own thoughts, as I was in mine.

Pa said our good-byes, and we walked back to our horses. We rode silently back to the courthouse. I had some thinking to do, and the basement archives was the perfect place to do that thinking. Pa's parting comment didn't help any: "What wrong with you, Bell? It looks like you saw a ghost."


	6. New York Headlines

**Chapter summary:** It's amazing what one can dig up in archived newspapers! Unfortunately for Bella Swan, the news doesn't _answer_ questions about their new residents, it _uncovers even more_ of them. Just when her life is interesting enough, Edward visits the courthouse to ask Sheriff Swan if he may call on Bella some evening. Bella seems willing enough to allow this.

* * *

Well, I had my answers. But that didn't mean that they made sense. That also didn't mean I had to like them.

January 7, 1934, _New York Times_, front page:  
"Banking Magnate Heir Brutally Murdered"

The article went on to explain how one Royce King II, Rochester's most eligible bachelor and the person in question, and two body guards were found mutilated in a destroyed bank vault. Four of his companions had been previously killed in similarly gruesome fashions. Police were "investigating theories" as to how the bank vault door, fully 12 inches thick constructed from solid steel meeting Underwriters Laboratories stringent specifications, could have been forced open. This tragedy was all the more powerfully felt as it followed on the heels of an aborted marriage to the belle of Rochester, Rosalie Lillian Hale, who died just before the ceremony was to occur nearly eight months ago to this day of mysterious causes.

Rosalie _Lillian Hale_. So I had some context for the familiarity of the name. I dug back to the prior year's archived papers and stumbled across this death notice:

April 3, 1933, _New York Times_, death notices:  
"Rosalie Lillian Hale, 18 years of age, suspected foul play,  
closed casket, memorial services to be held at ..."

The article mentioned that she preceded her parents in death, but made no mention of any twin sister named Lillian. The article did mention other younger siblings, but did not mention an older brother named Carlisle who practiced medicine. Could Carlisle and Lillian be estranged from the rest of the family? In what possible world could that happen? Perhaps this announcement was about entirely different Hale family that just happened to have a daughter about the same age with the same name? I looked for the wedding announcement:

January 15, 1933, _New York Times_, wedding announcements:  
"Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hale of Rochester are pleased to announce  
the engagement of their daughter  
Rosalie Lillian Hale  
to banking magnate Royce King II ..."

The announcement included a picture. There was no mistaking that face: Lillian looked at me out from the photograph. There could be no one else that looked like her, unless she were a twin. I clipped out the article with the photograph.

I admitted to myself, looking at her photograph, that she was much more terrifying in person. Perhaps it was because she was engaged that made her demeanor more pleasing in the picture? If so, she didn't photograph well, because the picture didn't do justice to her beauty — belle or no belle of Rochester the photograph lacked that ineffable essence of her beauty that had transfixed me in real life. Thinking about our visit sent a shiver down my spine.

It was odd that the announcement did not give the honorific title for her father. Was her brother the first doctor in the family? Wait a minute: it said her father was in banking, like the Kings, and usually, son followed in his father's footsteps. The Hales were an unusual family, to be sure, but still, why would Carlisle take up the medical profession during these hard times, when he would be sure to have work in banking with his own father's influence? I took all three articles with me. I planned to have a little chat with 'Lillian' about all this. Was her marriage arranged? Did she fake her death to escape an unwelcome marriage and her parents' disapproval? Where did she hide for ten months? Was that when she ran off with Dr. and Mrs. Hale? And who were they? Sympathetic cousins?

Questions kept swirling around in my head. I loved Pa dearly, Ma, too — she raised me right and with love ... _while she was here_ — so I could never imagine leaving my folks. But then I was blessed with a happy family, and I'd never be forced into an undesirable marriage. _After all, I'm not the 'belle of Rochester', I'm just Bella._ I never quite cared about my looks, and if all those strings came attached with good looks — _well, much more than good looks in this girl's case, _I reflected looking again at the picture — then I didn't envy her, whatever her name was. Nosiree, not one bit.

I was interrupted from my ruminations by the clock chiming 8 bells: it was already late. Time to close up; so I headed back upstairs to the office. What do you know! The courthouse had an unexpected visitor.

Edward was talking with Pa at his desk. This could be interesting.

"Hello, Edward." I could be bright and cheerful, if the situation called for it.

He smiled. Hey, it worked! His smile, on me, that is. I had to lean against the wall to appear casual. Otherwise a feather would've knocked me over. "Bella." His voice felt like velvet caressing my skin. I _was_ going for casual. Right.

"I was just thanking Sheriff Swan," he continued, "for your visit to our house. It was so kind of you both to extend the hospitality of your town to us, seeing that we're new here."

"Ummm." Hmm, it seemed I had a problem with my elocution around more than just Edward's sister-in-law-by-marriage ... I had to recover fast, because the good Sheriff Swan was taking an interest. Casual, remember? "That's quite all right, it's not often we get newcomers into town; we just wanted to make you feel welcome, is all." I got all that out in one breath. I hope it made sense. I looked down at my hands, which were busy trying to twist themselves together into knots.

It looked like he understood. I peered at him. It looked like he was looking at me. He was looking at me. So I helpfully pushed the visit along: "Ummm, so..."

See, I knew there was a reason he couldn't stay away from me. It had to be that conversations were so dull for him, and he lacked the necessary number of "umms" and the necessary number of dangling sentences to require the full force of his mind to decipher the meaning thereto. He liked me so much because I gave him something to occupy his free time.

I reviewed what I had just thought. I realized I was starting to lose the ability to make sense even to myself in my own thoughts. Great. Just great.

"So," he supplied, helpfully, "I was asking your father if I may be able to call on you after dinner some day, and he allowed that there was an availability Tuesday next, but he said that this matter was entirely in your hands. I wouldn't dream of imposing ..."

Okay. Wait. _Edward Platt_ was asking _me_ if it was _all right_ for him to visit? The strange house-warming _cum_ convalescent visit at noon followed by the damning newspaper articles in the archives topped by this bizarre request from Edward proved just one thing: I had entered the twilight zone.

So, I was living in a topsy-turvey world. I could play along with aplomb, I guess. "That would be fine, I suppose." _Imposition, indeed! _If he was imposing on me by visiting, then I hoped I would find myself frequently put out. "I was going to reread _Silas Marner_ for the fourth time, but I suppose you could show me a reason that you find Shakespeare worth reading. Not his plays, so much: I don't like tragedies for my romances. But maybe his histories or sonnets?" I never had the impetus to read them before, but I was sure Edward would warm to the challenge.

He did. "Yes, of course, no plays; Austen suits you, then. That's a shame, because some of his greatest writing can be found in his tragedies, but an introduction to some sonnets sounds excellent." _Just like his voice._ He took his leave: "Sheriff Swan, Bella, I'll see you Tuesday evening." With that, he left the courthouse and got into his own car, that dripped "speed" and "money" like a foot-high stack of griddle cakes slathered with butter dripped maple syrup.

"Wow, Pa, what kind of car is that?" I gasped as I watched it disappear down our town's one road.

Pa shrugged. Now I knew where I got my eloquence from.


	7. Self Invitation

**Chapter summary:** In the interim days awaiting Edward's visit, Bella contemplates her own identity, asking questions about her own self now. Edward calls on the Swans, then Bella invites herself to the 'Hale' residence the following day, pushing past all objections, to secure another visit with 'Lillian'.

* * *

Tuesday couldn't have come soon enough.

I realized that the Hale family had been here all of four days, and I found my life rather uninteresting without their company. Certainly, there was work to keep me occupied: assisting Pa at the courthouse, mucking the stalls, feeding and riding the horses (of course, Pa rode Patches; I rode Dolly), reading, and I got to catch up on that letter I'd been meaning to write to Ma. But when I sat down to do that task, it brought on other problems: what to put in the letter?

Surely my day-to-day work held no interest for Ma, as it now held no interest for me. Come to think of it, I'd never really been interested in the work anyway; I'd just been going through the motions of my life, but never really living it. Marching along a fixed path, never questioning where it would lead, because I already saw the future in the town folk here. They'd been born here, they worked here, and they'd die here. Same as me. Did I have any other options? None that I'd really considered that were any different than the one that I followed. I could've followed Ma back East, but then I'd be living the life she lead. It would be different than living with Pa, but it'd be the same: it'd be a life I'd follow because everyone else was following it. It'd be a life I'd go through and then just die, leaving no more of a mark on this Earth than anybody else who blindly followed their own lives.

Not that I'd thought anything differently, that is until now, but what else, until now, had there been to think of? I could blaze a trail through the world that left a permanent mark, like Meriwether Lewis and Will Clark did back in the turn of the last century right through this area of the country, but that wasn't me either. I could change my fate to follow Edward, cleave to him, as it were. But would he have me? It seemed clear, for some strange reason, that he was interested, so I guess he would. But wouldn't that be just the same as following the lives of one of my parents? Following Edward's life?

After 17 years of being just Bella, I finally began to wonder who 'Bella' was. What made this girl interesting to Edward? Did I like her? If I did like her, was that okay? Or did that make me complacent? If I didn't like her, what would I change, and how would I go about changing it? It appeared Edward wouldn't mind discussing these questions. He had already asked me so many, about me and other topics in general, in our walk around town, so he appeared interested in learning about me. Perhaps he could help me learn about me, too. In fact, he would probably welcome it as a challenge. I pondered all these thoughts through the rest of the week as I automatically helped Pa to run the county and the household.

But there were more pressing challenges to consider, at the moment, for example, what of 'Rosalie/Lillian' Hale? Apparently, I had made an enemy in Lillian, the presumably dead and therefore avenging angel. Was I, then, to die because I caught her ire and not her fancy? My last question, asked like that in the privacy and safety of my own home sounded lunatic, but it was entirely reasonable when I recalled staring into the eyes of the cobra.

Besides, what did I do to make her angry? I called on a sick girl; is that some kind of crime? I fully intended to find out, but how? I couldn't ask in front Edward and the Hales. They all seemed so cautious around me, as if they weren't telling me something, as if they were holding something back. I needed to consider how to get her alone somehow.

There was a knock at the door. Apparently, my considerations took me all the way through Pa's work day and supper. I guess the letter to Ma would have to wait for another day. Edward presented himself, with his Shakespeare sonnets. Pa and I sat as he read some out to us. Pa visibly struggling to maintain his tolerance. Listening to poetry wasn't high on Pa's list of favorite things, but he wasn't about to leave me unchaperoned. Pa was a quiet man, but his heart was in the right place, and he would move Hell and high water when it came to me.

The sonnets were beautiful. They were about ... love? death? beauty? I actually wasn't quite sure, but I was sure I loved hearing them. Actually, he could have been reading out the newspaper to us, and it would have sounded as wonderful. His voice was that mesmerizing. All too soon, the visit was over. I didn't get to ask him a thing about what I had been thinking on throughout this past week. So much for my edification. Pa and I saw him to his car, but I did press for something.

"How's" — _don't call her Rosalie_ — "Lillian?" I asked, all concerned.

He reported happily, "Better every day. The migraines are gone, but she's still recovering her strength from the consumption."

"I'd really like to visit her sometime this week..." I offered. Pa grimaced. Fine. I was going to be neighborly, even if everyone else hated me for it. I wished Pa could read my thoughts, because there were too many ways to interpret an angry glare, so I didn't even bother with that.

Edward set the wheels of my mind turning in another direction entirely, however, "Sooner in the week is better than later. We're all going to be out of town Thursday night through the weekend."

"Tomorrow, then, if that's okay with your family? How does two o'clock sound?" Yes, I had invited myself over, but visiting the convalescing was justification enough in my book. Besides, this wasn't Rochester, this was Ekalaka, Carter County: these folks from Town had better become used to Country people popping by to visit. Like me.

Edward didn't seem displeased with this, however, so I took it as an encouraging sign, but Pa found the need to speak up. "Bells, I've got to be doing work for the county during the day. The Hales and Mr. Platt, here," Pa nodded to Edward, "are established, so I've got other things calling now."

"Pa, don't worry about it, I can find my way there just fine."

Pa didn't like that. "Bella, I'd have to escort you; it wouldn't be proper for a young lady ..."

I cut him off. Since when is the New West the hub of propriety? Last I checked, Montana didn't promote riding side saddle. Our own Butte, anyone? Copper miners, saloons and hookers: I'm sure high tea was served every day there! "Pa! I'm going to visit" — _'L', think 'L'!_ — "_Lillian, not Edward!_ ... no offense, Edward." I added that apology hastily.

"None taken, but I agree with your father ..." he replied easily.

I was cutting everybody off today. So much for the 'young lady' image. "I'm not a baby girl anymore, and I can handle myself! If you upstanding gentlemen are so worried about my virtue, I'm sure Dr. and Mrs. Hale will protect it and me, right, Edward?"

"I'll check with Carlisle," he caved. They didn't have a telephone installed at their house — the line for electricity hadn't even been run out there yet — so he promised to leave word at the courthouse tomorrow morning.

"... and that word will be that it's okay for me to visit at two o'clock tomorrow, right?" I wasn't going to allow Edward the room to weasel out of this by leaving some excuse note tomorrow.

"Bella," he exhaled, "probably." That's the first I've heard anything less than amiable from him. I guess I was pushing it. Well, he had to deal with how I am ... which we would be discussing, anyway. He continued: "We are in the midst of moving in and Carlisle needs to establish his practice here. I'm appalled, in fact, that he hasn't started working already."

Nothing doing. "Don't worry about Dr. Hale receiving me properly, Edward. Mrs. Hale will be there, I'm sure ... unless she's a nurse?"

He rolled his eyes: "No, she's not, and, yes, Esme, at least, will be there."

"Good. That's great! So you can simply convey I'll be there tomorrow, 2 pm; no need to stop by the courthouse." See? Problem solved. My decided nature always paid off: I didn't need to deal with problems, as I simply did what I needed to do. Anybody who didn't like it could sit in the bushes and watch.

Well, at least that was one thing I was sure about myself.

And Edward chivalrous nature had returned. "Until tomorrow then," he replied formally, but kindly — I guess he decided not to push back — with a ghost of a smile as he executed a slight bow that didn't look silly or out of place for him at all. That's just the way he was: a perfect gentleman. We didn't have many of those in Carter County. I might have to behave better if I wanted him to keep calling. I wondered if the new me needed to be a perfect lady. Hmm, that might be hard. Or, maybe he preferred feisty and that was why he was calling on me now? Or, the inarticulate? _Or maybe I was spending way too much energy thinking about how to rearrange who I am for a boy I've only just met._ I grimaced at that thought, but then fought right back, _for a boy I've only just met who happened to be the first boy ever to call on me._ I rather liked that last thought, it made me think that my interest in him was returned. Perhaps not equally, but returned none-the-less. That encouraged me. I was also encouraged that we could have a disagreement, but it wasn't the end of the world: he had let me have my way with my invitation to his house, even though it had annoyed him some, but he didn't storm off in a huff, ending this nice poetry-reading visit on a sour note, petulant that he didn't win, like I'd seen some boys around here act. How the girls put up with that, I couldn't imagine. No, _Edward_ — a warmth suffused me just thinking his name — behaved in just the opposite manner, he handled the situation rather gracefully. It was actually sweet of him.

He got into his car and headed off toward his house. He didn't know it, but my pleasant thoughts followed him.

So, now that I had secured the time, I wondered what the visit tomorrow would bring. I was comfortable that tomorrow wouldn't bring much in the way of boredom. I was sure, at least, of that.


	8. A Visit and Investigation

**Chapter summary:** Nervousness. Bella deals with it in her horse and in herself as she visits the Hale invalid. Although initially distant at the thought of _her Edward_ going to the Swan's for dinner, 'Lillian' becomes very excited at the thought of having Bella for dinner at the Hale's, instead. After the visit, Bella does some digging at the library, finding more surprises about the newcomers.

* * *

As I rode to the Hales, I decided I wasn't going to allow Dolly to lead me about. _She_ was the horse, here; _I_ was the one in charge. But then she still started and froze when the Hale house came into view, and no amount of prodding, nor coaxing, nor eventually cursing and application of the crop would get her moving again. So, _I_ was in charge, but _she_ wasn't budging.

I compromised: I dismounted and led her up the house. Leaders lead from the front, after all. Right? I sighed. _That's Bella the Leader, who can't even get her horse to do what she wants her to do._ As I tied her to a post by the front porch, I gently scolded her: "See, Dolly, you silly horse, nothing to be afraid of. It's just newcomers from Rochester. See?" But she was afraid, and it took not a little while to calm her enough to leave her.

I knocked on the door, which Mrs. Hale answered, but before we could even exchange a 'howdy' Dolly was rearing up and whinnying in fear. Mrs. Hale stared at Dolly, frozen by the door, her eyes widening, and she swallowed convulsively. Apparently there was plenty of fear to spread around today. I excused myself to calm Dolly, and Mrs. Hale told me to come in when I had settled things, quickly turning back into the house and shutting the door. _Stupid horse, what a great way to spoil the start of a visit!_

I calmed Dolly, again, and let myself into the house after a brief knock at the door. It turned out Dr. Hale had started work today. So Mrs. Hale and I do-si-doed about a polite period of hospitality before I would visit the invalid Rosalie, _no: Lillian, Lillian!_ that is, Lillian. After exchanging comments about the weather, which was foul today, Mrs. Hale motioned me toward Lillian's room and walked with me to Lillian's door. Mrs. Hale announced me, quietly, like Edward did, and we stepped into her room. Two wooden chairs flanked the bed. They had prepared for visitors this time. I looked at the invalid. It was Rosalie. It _had_ to be Rosalie. I moved to one of the chairs as casually as I could, all the time swearing I would go directly home — not to the courthouse — after this visit to dig up that wedding announcement to see this face regarding me here in the clipping.

_Let's get on with the visit._ After greeting "Lillian" and complimenting her improved looks — the circles had disappeared from under her eyes, which seemed themselves also brighter, and her face looked slightly less pallid — I decided to use this part of the visit for a bit of what I hoped to be innocuous digging. I addressed Mrs. Hale: "We're so glad to have a doctor in town now, but how could you every leave Rochester to come here, to the middle of nowhere? Don't you miss the convenience of the city?"

Lillian looked as if she was about to say something, but Mrs. Hale answered immediately: "I like it here. City life is much too constricting!" Lillian seemed to be mutter something to herself, but I couldn't catch it, and Mrs. Hale continued without a pause. "There's so much for us to do here, too. As a doctor, my husband can help a lot more here than back in Rochester."

"He'll absolutely be put to good use here," I assured her. "What did he do in Rochester, though? Isn't a doctor that is saving lives performing a vital service no matter where he is?" I found this topic a much easier line to follow than any concerning the topic lying on the bed in front of me.

"Well, yes, I quite agree," she responded easily, "that's why we came here. There are plenty of doctors in Rochester. My husband was teaching at the University of Rochester, and he was anxious to start practicing what he'd been teaching."

That sounded plausible enough. I wondered, idly, what he taught there. "Oh? What did he teach, anything special?"

"My husband would say everything about the human person is special," she smiled kindly at me, "and he felt that the best way to help the most people would be as a general practitioner. So he taught human physiology to pre-med students."

"Well, the world could always use more good doctors, so it was nice of Dr. Hale to be teaching, ... but I'm glad you all are here, now." Thinking of Edward, I was _really_ glad they were here. Speaking of which: "Has Edward gone out with Dr. Hale as well?"

Lillian narrowed her eyes at me. _Good!_ I thought to myself — not the narrowed eyes! — thinking of her as "Lillian", not "Rosalie", will make this conversation (any conversation) easier. It also is better to think of her without putting quotation marks around her name. It'd be just like me to slip up in my nervousness and call her "Rosalie" without even noticing it. That is: I wouldn't notice, but I bet they would. I was determined to be careful. I wasn't interested in finding out how they would react to that.

"Yes, as the house needs several extensive repairs, Edward is doing a bit of shopping. I do apologize, my dear, he really was looking forward to receiving you today, but perhaps he may call on you this evening?"

_Evening, Noon, or whenever, Edward could visit anytime he'd like!_ I thought, and then echoed that thought to Mrs. Hale: "That would be nice; would he like to join Pa and me for supper?"

She smiled. "I'm sure Edward wouldn't dream of imposing on your family time at dinner, nor would he wish to add to your meal preparation work."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all, Mrs. Hale. You know as well as I do that preparing a meal for one takes about the same amount of work as preparing for ten. I was asking so as to know if I should set out another plate and add some servings: it's chicken cordon bleu tonight."

Lillian laughed. "Esme, isn't that sweet!" she exclaimed. "Bella has cooked our Edward a special meal!" Apparently, Her Highness had deigned to join the conversation.

But I didn't like the way she said _our Edward,_ and the tone was light but distinctly mocking. Nothing I could call her out on, but everything that caused my blood to boil. I covered that by smiling at her quizzically, but Mrs. Hale answered me, shooting Lillian a glare first: "Actually, I do need to borrow Edward through supper today to take care of some household work."

Huh? Something wrong with my cooking? Did Edward not like chicken? Who _couldn't_ like chicken cordon bleu? It kept the blood thick for these cold winter days. Maybe I should also mention the mashed potatoes and gravy?

Maybe it had nothing to to with food at all, and something to do with Lillian? The crease in my forehead probably gave away some measure of my concerns, because Mrs. Hale hastened to add: "He'll be sorry to miss your supper, as I'm sure Edward would love to have anything you prepare, but we are going away for the weekend, so we really must take care of some household things before we go."

"Oh! I understand." And then I hated myself for offering: "Then I don't mean to impose on you. If Edward has to stay to work here, I don't want him to feel obliged to visit us..."

"Oh, no, no! I don't think Edward would last the weekend without at least saying hello, Bella, dear. As opposed to feeling obliged, Edward recounts to us the pleasant conversations when he visits." She paused, considering.

I couldn't help but notice the hint of Lillian's downturned lips. I knew it was mean of me, but I couldn't help feeling a bit smug about that. They were practically brother and sister, and I wanted their relationship to stay that way. Picturing this girl in front of me, the personification of Diana on Earth, was a thought too terrible to contemplate: she could sweep away any man with one raised eyebrow. I did not wish to think of what would happen if she were to consider me a rival for Edward's affections. He would fall over himself the minute she set her cap at him.

Mrs. Hale continued: "Actually, he's always been far too serious, in my view, and it's nice to see him in a brighter mood these days. I believe you're exerting a good influence on him."

I didn't know how to process her last declaration, and wouldn't know how to respond appropriately, anyway. _My day_ was brighter when he was around — even though most of his visits were after dusk, in point of fact — but I didn't see how I could brighten_ his_. I mean, seriously! He was a walking library wing that drove an expensive sports car like he was born into the driver's seat. I simply had nothing useful to add to his conversational musings, and had problems leading my mare to a hitching post just today, nevermind attempting to match his driving skills. I didn't see anything in me that would merit Mrs. Hale's assessment.

So I blushed out a "thank you" for politeness' sake. "But I didn't mean to be discussing mundane things like the Swan's calendar now. Lillian, I do apologize: I must be boring you to tears."

Lillian smiled and sat up straighter in bed. "Bella, you are such a sweet little thing!" She actually leaned toward me a bit and inhaled, a dreamy look settling on her face. What? Did this compliment make me a Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar? I couldn't imagine how I could possibly smell _sweet, _however. The smell of "horseback-riding country girl's sweat" couldn't be all that appealing, could it? I couldn't imagine that. On the other hand, when she had leaned closer, I did get a whiff of her perfume. Honeysuckle and rose. _How appropriate!_ Her scent matched her name. And it was simply intoxicating, like Edward's cologne, but different. And I didn't even _like_ the smell of those perfumes when the ladies got all gussied up around Christmas and New Year's. No, it wasn't those cheap, strong perfumes that knocked you over. It was subtle, but effervescent ... compelling. I bet she had her Eau d'whatever imported right from _gaie Paris!_

I had nearly lost myself in her scent, but her voice brought me back to the here and now. "Being cooped up in this house has made my entire existence so miserably dull. I am sick unto death of reading dead words on dead pages by dead people — if I read or hear one more Shakespeare sonnet, I'll scream!"

Here I couldn't help but laugh out loud with shock. Her outburst contrasted so sharply with my all-to-recent experience with said sonnets that I couldn't imagine how she could even form the thought. I guess Edward had been reading out to her in her convalescence, but her reaction was more in line with Pa's that with mine. _Fine, I'll occupy his reading time if you don't need it._

She paused for me to recover myself and gave me a knowing look, rolling her eyes, and said with a smile: "Oh, he's subjected you to that torture as well? That Edward and his recitations!" Then she continued: "But look at you! Here you come, right into my room, and so _vibrantly alive!_ I haven't been so entertained in ages! I don't care what subject you choose to talk about: I love listening to your day-to-day affairs and how you manage them. Your cares and concerns are so wonderfully _human!_"

_As opposed to what?_ I wondered.

I realized this is the most I've ever had from Lillian: the most words and the most feeling. But I couldn't tell the intent. Was she being sincere or sarcastic? But she was on a roll now, it seemed, and was nearly vibrating with excitement as the words continued to flow.

"Esme!" she exclaimed, "I've just had the greatest idea in the world!"

Esme, that is, Mrs. Hale, looked at her ward more with caution than with enthusiasm. "Lillian, dear, calm yourself. Your recovery ..."

"Yes, yes, yes! My recovery!" Lillian snorted, dismissing that with a regal and swift wave of her hand. "My idea, since you couldn't wait to ask, dearest Esme, is this: since Edward cannot have dinner at the Swan's with Bella, let's have Bella for dinner here! Isn't that perfect?"

Mrs. Hale looked nonplussed.

"Well, that's very kind of you to invite me, Lillian, and I'd love to come, ..." I started, but was cut off by Lillian, whose eyes glowed with delight.

"Do you hear that, Esme?" Lillian beamed with delight, "Bella'd _love_ that! ... and I would, too! Bella, you'd be so welcome here for dinner; please do come! Anytime!"

This house wasn't wired for electricity, but Lillian surely was.

"Well, the thing is, I kind of take care of supper for my pa, and ..."

"Oh! We'd take care of him, too! Like you said, once dinner gets going, one or ten are all the same amount of work, right? Right, Esme? No problem for us whatsoever!" Lillian's unabashed smile was beautiful and terrifying, all at the same time.

I had a flash of realization: Lillian and Edward were everything that I was not. They were perfect; I, plain. They were commanding; I, compliant. They were ... but while I was in the midst of this epiphany, Mrs. Hale asserted herself as the lady of the house.

"Lillian! That's quite enough!" Lillian's excitement froze on her face in shock. "You have excited yourself too much today. You need to rest, ... right now!" With that, Lillian's excitement imploded into a sullen sulk. Mrs. Hale stood and turned to address me. "Bella, shall we?" as she moved to the door. After greeting Lillian, and Lillian practically begging me to visit again soon, albeit in a much more muted tone, I followed Mrs. Hale out of the room. She closed the door quietly, yet firmly, behind us, and apologized: "We love having you over, but the house is not in any condition to host a dinner party just yet ... Lillian's idea is a good one, although premature. We'll host something once the house is presentable." Here Mrs. Hale nodded to the signs of construction and destruction circumscribing the new music room and the exposed framework.

Now that I was outside Miss Tornado's room, I found that I could think a bit more evenly. "Of course, Mrs. Hale, and how kind. I entirely understand. Thank you for letting me visit you and Lillian today, and I'm sorry to have imposed."

"No imposition at all, my dear; we're always happy to have you over." Mrs. Hale smiled warmly at me, meaning it.

I fully intended use this open invitation. But first I had to do some more thinking and checking, so I said my goodbyes to Mrs. Hale, and she saw me to the door, let me out, and quickly closed the door behind me. There was a chill in the air, so I could understand her avoiding the cold of the outdoors.

Dolly was still tied to the hitching post. Will miracles never cease? But she was still a bit nervous. "It's okay, Dolly," I cooed as a rubbed her neck and mounted. "It's not like they're going to eat you, or anything!" Dolly grew happier the further we got from the Hale's residence and broke into an unbidden trot. I directed her toward home.

When we got there, I ran into the house and pulled the folder of articles from under my bed, flipping it open when nervous hands.

Yes, no mistaking it: the girl at the Hale house _was_ Rosalie.

The chill I felt was from more than the ride in the winter air. I thought for a while, lying in my bed, looking at Lillian/Rosalie in the clipping. Dolly was still saddled; I rode her to the library.

I dug into the college materials and literature. There was no Dr. Carlisle Hale on the faculty at the University of Rochester. I made sure: I looked three times through the medical faculty staff rolls. Then I read every name of the whole University faculty and staff. No Dr. Hale. I looked up pre-med. The teacher for Human Physiology had been a Dr. C. Cullen. "C" as in "Carlisle"? Or, "C" as in "I'm going Crazy"? I looked around the library surreptitiously and ripped out the page from the prospectus as quietly as I could. I felt just like that heroine Nancy Drew the girls in town twittered over. Perhaps I could join the newly formed club? I could sign up for the rôle of secretary, so I wouldn't have to participate, as I'd be taking notes, and such.

By the time I finally made it to the courthouse, it was time to close up shop. I felt sick with the thought of having to face Edward tonight, playing the part of a polite hostess, suspecting what I suspected. _Knowing what I know._ Actually, I _was_ sick: Pa looked at me worriedly as we rode home. The horses were walking only, but I don't know how I stayed in the saddle. In the barn, my hands didn't work on the saddle knot, they were shaking that hard. Pa sent me inside. I couldn't fix Pa his promised chicken cordon bleu, which he loved, and that made me feel even worse. When Pa came in, he practically strong-armed me into bed which I collapse into, thanking God Almighty that I had somehow remembered to conceal the clipping under the mattress when I left the house earlier. There was no way I could even dream about sleeping — _ha-ha._

But somehow I heard from a great distance Pa shooing Edward away at the front door as exhaustion claimed me.


	9. Gift of Flowers

**Chapter summary:** February 1934, Bella recuperates from her attack of nerves and receives a surprising gift and a not-so-surprising well-wisher.

* * *

When I woke up, it was bright outside my window. I groaned. I had overslept. Which meant that Pa didn't wake me. Which meant I would catch hell if I showed up at the courthouse. I could just imagine Pa's indignant look: "Young lady, you have three seconds to turn yourself right around and get back into your bed, or else the clink will find itself with its first delinquent!" Pa always went overboard when it came to worrying over me. So there was nothing for it. I grabbed _Pride and Prejudice_ and settled in.

"IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man  
in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

I snickered at the first line. Had I fallen, somehow, into an Edwardian novelization? This time the reading would be a more interesting, seeing that now I could draw from personal experience, but as I continued the words began to blur together.

The next thing I knew, I found myself with my cheek pressed against the book. Apparently, I had fallen back asleep. Apparently, I had only made it to chapter 2. Apparently, I drooled in my sleep. On my book. On the phrase: "When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?" _Shoot_. I hoped it hadn't soaked through too far. It hadn't: only ten or so pages. Small blessings. I hoped it'd dry without fusing the pages. I'd need to wait on that answer. I idly wondered why I never went to balls like Elizabeth Bennett. Nobody ever went out of their way for plain-jane Bella. Nosiree.

Apparently, someone had left flowers on my dresser.

_Wait! What?_

Yellow pansy-like flowers with baby's breath? I got up and examined them. They were in a cut-crystal vase that was now the most beautiful thing our house contained. There was a card.

_"For a dear friend's swift recovery: zennia and yarrow. E."_

Apparently, Edward had taken calligraphy. His elegant script was perfect and beautiful. Of course. Just like him.

It made me sad: I would never be able to write him a letter, because I would never want him to see my chicken scratch. He would drop his interest, then and there, just on general principles. Water splashed on the card, marring his words. _What the hell!_ I never cursed, but I was furious: why would the roof decide to leak right on Edward's card. More water fell on it, and I looked up for the offending leak.

The leak was on my cheeks. I wiped away my stupid tears.

I got back into bed. I needed to lie down. I needed to think.

_Think. Think. Think._

Telling myself to think wasn't helping me to form any cogent thoughts. Okay, so I planned what I needed _to do._ Doing: that was tenable, at least. I needed to confront Rosalie, and I needed to confront her alone, without the rest of her family knowing.

What else? Edward was going to visit this evening. I was sure of that. Was he going to be turned away again from the last chance of seeing me this week? Somehow, I knew he would demand to comfort the invalid. So I had to use Pa's nature to my advantage, because I couldn't face Edward for long.

_Fancy that: Pa'll finally rescue me_. I'd have to mark this date on my calendar.

Then I realized something that stopped me cold. I was glad that I was lying down. Edward had already visited me today.

Apparently, I was the world's heaviest sleeper, because I had slept right through Edward's delivery of flowers right into my room. Well, at least I didn't snore, so I had that going for me.

_Edward was in my room. Today._

I had never taken an interest in mystery novels. Perhaps I should start reading them now, so I would know what happens next in the plot. As I was thinking this, I heard the front door open. Ah, is that the sound of the plot thickening?

Nope, it was just Pa. His idea of sneaking was to make the sounds of a shoed horse walking over cobblestones. I shut my eyes, pretending to sleep, as my door creaked open. I could just imagine the exaggerated care he took to peek in on me. The door creaked shut, and I heard Papa Bear amble off to the kitchen to fend for himself. Poor Pa! I hoped he could find his way to the ice box without getting lost.

How did Edward not wake me up? _Oh, of course: he can sneak perfectly, too_, I guessed. I'd have to make a list of his perfections, but then I wondered if that would be signing up for a task that would take more hours than the day was long...

I heard something on the skillet sizzling, and then the smell of bratwurst insinuated itself through my nose straight to my stomach. Ouch! I was really hungry, but a knock on the front door scared that thought straight out of my head and my stomach, which flipped convulsively. Good thing I hadn't wolfed something down, as it'd be probably coming right back up now.

As I predicted, Pa did a great job of shooing, but, again, as I predicted, Edward wasn't buying what Pa was selling. There were a whole lot of "I insist"s going around. Edward was politer but firmer with his "I insist"s, I noted, as I heard one pair of footsteps come to my room.

"You see, Edward," Pa was speaking quietly. For him. "She's asleep now. She's never sick, so something really must have knocked her for a loop. She really needs to rest."

How is it possible that Edward was in the room? I had heard only one set of footsteps. Were all the Hales ghosts, or something? I tried to recall if anyone had touched them. No. Couldn't recollect. But then I remembered Mrs. Hale had opened the door for me. Ghosts weren't supposed to do that, right? Was it a ghost door to "Lillian"'s room?

I opened my eyes. Yes, Edward was here. Again. "Hey, Pa." I didn't need to fake the weak sound.

"Sweetie, Edward Platt is here to see you." He glared meaningfully at Edward. "He gets one hello before I clap on the irons."

"That's fine, Pa, I'm good for one minute, I guess." I slid my eyes over to Edward who knelt down near Pa. He touched my forehead.

I must actually be running a very high fever. Or maybe his sports car didn't have a heater? His hands were ice cold.

"Bella," he breathed.

You know, I could live on his air. Really.

"Edward, thank you for coming, but I'm _so sorry!_" He looked at me in confusion, so I reached my hand from under my bed and handed him his card. He took it, looked at it, but still looked confused. "I ruined your beautiful card."

He sighed in exasperation: "Bella, I'll compose one hundred such cards so you can ruin every last one, just so long as you get better."

I wanted to find out who his finishing school teacher was, so I could shake that person's hand in gratitude.

"K." was about all I could muster.

Pa could muster more than that: "Alright. You: out!" he commanded as he pointed first at Edward and then at the door. That's Pa, my rescuer. All he needed now was a cape. Edward reluctantly complied, but not before leaning in ... his lips were practically white with the cold ... and breathing a "take care" onto me. I felt as if I had received a special benediction. He then stood and thanked Pa for the visit as he left.

I should get sick more often. I'll add that to my monthly planner.

Pa came back to check on me, I'm sure, but I must have slipped under again by then.

...

Two days straight sleeping! That wasn't humanly possible. Why was I so out of it? I woke the next day, chugging the glass of water Pa had left by my bed — bless him! — and was ready to eat a breakfast of pillow followed by a side of chair. I was famished. I practically ran to the kitchen and devoured the bratwurst in the ice box left over from last night. It was cold, but I didn't care. Pa had had mush for breakfast, I scooped out a large serving from the pot into a bowl, poured milk and molasses over that.

_Where is the coffee!_ I growled. If Pa hadn't left me some coffee, someone would have to die.

He did leave some coffee. Bless him again. As I slurped it down, I realized today I'd be poking around an empty Hale household, or today I'd be talking with Rosalie — _not "Lillian"_ — alone. The coffee suddenly left a really bad acid taste in my mouth.

I sighed, poured the remainder of my cup down the sink drain — something that I had never done before — and went to my room to dress for the inevitable.

* * *

**A/N**: There is a truly wonderful story called "One Dozen Roses" by the author Angel Ren about a not-so-mysterious admirer who leaves Bella a special St. Valentine's Day gift. This chapter has no relation to that story, other than the fact that in both Bella receives flowers. Do yourself a favor, though, please: look up Angel Ren's story and read it. It is a delight and is wonderfully-crafted from start to finish.

Now, as to Edward's selection, the flowers he chose have specific meanings: yarrow designates "good health" and zinnia means "thinking of a friend". Edward, being born before the Great War knows this well. The rest of us probably must rely on today's oracle — google — to help us along here.


	10. Rosalie Revealed

**Chapter summary: **February, 1934, Hale residence, a faked death? a faked name? Bella didn't know what Lillian/Rosalie was hiding, but she swore to get to the bottom of it. She did. Rosalie couldn't have been happier. Some stones are better left unturned.

* * *

I rode out to the Hale's house on Dolly with a basket of biscuits I had baked and a jar of orange marmalade, my props with the excuse for visiting the invalid — a tea would be pleasant and safe, wouldn't it? — if she was there. _And why shouldn't she be there? Dr. Hale said his "sister" was on bed rest for a month ..._ I thought darkly to myself. Not that she looked like she needed the rest. She looked rather like a caged animal on her bed than what I had looked like yesterday: a girl recuperating from exhaustion.

Today was going to be an interesting day.

Dolly was _still_ skittish near the Hale property. I had to dismount again and lead her to the house and tie her off. I was annoyed with her, but, I knew my annoyance with her was in large part due to fact that Dolly didn't need to pretend to be brave. She was scared of the Hales, because there _was_ something scary about them. All of them, not just Rosalie: her presence was obviously terrifying, but there was something _off_ about the others, too. They were too precise, moved too smoothly, were just too perfect to be real. As I had thought before: ghost-like. Dolly knew this and acted out on it. I knew it, too, but I had to keep up a polite pretense to obey some unwritten rule of society. The pretense was tiring and annoying, and I had directed anger to Dolly, but it wasn't her fault, and, deep down, I knew that. And that annoyed me, too.

I walked up to their front door with my basket tucked under my arm. _What do I do now? Knock?_ That seemed like a reasonable course of action, but my first rap pushed the door open. Further open, that is: the door was ajar.

The creep-o-meter had just pegged to the far right.

"Um, Lillian?" I called out strongly, "it's Bella Swan? I brought you something and came to visit while your family was out?" That sounded reasonable, right? Not particularly brave, nor nonchalant, ... but reasonable.

The house was quiet; the Hales and Edward were out, it appeared. Then, after a pause, a mellifluous voice called out to me: "Yes, I'm in bed; please come in." It was perfectly pitched and made me realize just how raucous my own voice had sounded. I patted my back pocket, feeling the articles I had clipped crinkle in response, my talisman and my motivation, and I pushed past the front room through the hall to her door. I paused, taking a deep breath, opened the door and stepped into her room.

There she sat, as before, almost regally, but this time with a pleasant smile on her face. Her smile grew as she looked me over and noted the basket in my arm. "I brought some biscuits I made and some marmalade. I figured you might like to do tea."

She practically beamed. "I wouldn't have believed him if I didn't have the proof right in front of my very nose: Edward _was_ right; you are so very sweet!" _Sweet? Me?_ I don't know where Edward got that impression, but he seemed to believe it strongly enough to share that with his family. I blushed at the compliment. Rosalie noticed and laughed liltingly.

I wished I could laugh like that.

"Do sit down. It's so kind of you to visit me, Bella, especially after I was told you weren't doing well at all yourself."

"Of course I'd come visit," I replied instantly, "I wasn't up for company myself, but you've looked so much better that I felt, so I thought you would like the company."

"Thank you."

An awkward pause followed, so I pushed forward into the silence: "You actually seem much improved from when I first saw you. Dr. Hale mentioned you wouldn't be up and about for a month, but you look healthy enough to be out of bed now," I commented. She did look much better than I felt the last couple of days, even though she was recovering from consumption, and I was merely dealing with nerves ... _because of her_, I reminded myself. "Perhaps Dr. Hale is too cautious? Or perhaps he's out of practice due to his teaching at Rochester?" I added the last bit slyly and as naturally sounding as I could manage.

"I would say he's very careful. In fact, he's never made a mistake." She responded with a tinge of self-righteousness.

"Oh, of course, I meant nothing against Dr. Hale, but being so young, he's probably being extra careful. It just looked to me that you don't need to be stuck in bed any longer — I couldn't stand two days; I don't see how you could manage a month of this!"

"I don't either." She whispered, looking positively glum. But then, in a flash, she brightened right up, "But a month? That's nothing as compared to a lifetime, and we can't be making mistakes, can we, when one's health and one's life is on the line?"

"You certainly take the long view!" I was surprised. I knew from the immediate past that I couldn't bear to be idle and let life pass me by like that, even under a doctor's orders, even for just two days, never mind a month!

"Yes, I do. But I know from personal experience that making decisions without thinking things through thoroughly can lead to serious regrets, so I've learned the long view is good for long-term happiness."

"Well, well," I said. I suspected her last pronouncement and the articles in my back pocket were intimately connected, but I felt, for forms sake, that questioning her words directly would be impolite — prying. I so dearly wanted to know everything, to have all the dots connected and have all this make sense, but haranguing went against my nature. Maybe she'd be willing to tell me the story of her past, but I couldn't brow-beat it out of her ... I would never wish that to be done to me, and when people became prying about me or others, it was always made life very uncomfortable for me. So I took a different tack, "Well." _Yes, I'm good at saying "well": thank you for noticing._ "It must have been quite the decision for you to come out here to Montana all the way from New York! And leaving your parents behind; you're on quite an adventure!"

"You find Ekalaka adventurous, do you?" Her expression was amused.

"Well, no, I mean, actually, yes. Now it is: your family has generated a bit of a stir by coming here, as any newcomer would, but I meant," _What __did__ I mean?_ "that you picked up roots from what you knew and from a comfortable living Back East to have to start all over again out here."

"For a time I _did_ have a comfortable life in Rochester, but it really wasn't my own life ..." Rosalie began.

"I know what you mean." I muttered under my breath.

"No, you don't. You have no idea what I mean," she snapped harshly. How did she hear me? And what did she mean by that? And what's with the sudden shifts in moods?

I lost it. "Well, then, tell me what you _do_ mean, Rosalie!" I snapped right back. "Because I have no idea what you're talking about, and I'd really like to know!"

She looked at me.

After an uncomfortable pause, I put in another "Well?" petulantly, crossing my arms. I suppose my behavior couldn't be called the model of "comforting the sick", but I had held my temper too long already dealing with this exasperation. I wasn't about to back down, and my last confusing visit with her still stung. On top of that, all the mystery of this family had already laid me out for two days. I didn't like all these maneuvers: tell it to me straight when you're talking to me. That, or don't talk with me at all!

She continued to look at me and then she smiled again. A shiver went up my spine, for it wasn't what anyone would call a warm smile. "It seems we have a lot to learn from each other, Bella. Why don't you put on some tea? Then we can have a nice talk."

Finally, we're getting somewhere! I hoped tea would be a breakthrough, because I was tired of talking around in circles. "That sounds wonderful, Lillian." Relief wreathed my voice. I set the basket down, "I'll go make the tea and be back in a few minutes."

"Take your time; I'm looking forward to our chat." She seemed ecstatic.

I got up and headed back to the kitchen. It was pristine. Mrs. Hale was much more of a neatness freak than I was. I looked in the cupboard. It was empty. Huh! I opened the cabinets: no tea things. Perhaps they hadn't unpacked them yet? I looked in the ice box. It wasn't cold. And it was empty, except for my pan of corn bread from two visits ago, untouched. The bread had hardened into a brick. Was there something wrong with my corn bread? Mrs. Hale's comment about Edward liking anything I cooked came back to me and stung like a slap to the face.

My country cooking must've been just too disgustingly plain for these folks from Town. I blotted my eyes, gritted my teeth and put on my brave face. I think I've cried more in this last week than the entirety of my life preceding it. "Lillian?" I called, heading back to her room, "I couldn't find any of the tea things, could you tell me ..." She wasn't in her bed. "Lillian?" I called out louder.

Then, out front from outside the house, I heard a blood-curling scream. "Lillian!" I shouted and beat feet, had she fallen and hurt herself? The Hales were going to kill me. _They'd have to wait in line behind Pa!_ I tore through the front door, then froze at the sight that greeted my eyes.

Nothing made sense. Dolly lay on the ground, her legs twitched spasmodically. Her head was unnaturally bent upward, looking straight at me with eyes glazing over. Lillian was bent over her, kissing her neck. All I could think was _Pa's not going to be happy with me about losing a horse._ Then Lillian looked up from Dolly, red stained her mouth. I noted, stupidly, that she was wearing a full-length velvet candy-red dress. It looked tailor-made: high society. _The color looks good on her, it brings out the highlights in her irises._ Then there was a red and white blur. I felt something smooth, cold and hard wrap around my neck. My throat constricted, and then everything went black.


	11. On the Run

**Chapter summary: **February, 1934, Rosalie takes Bella for a stroll and gives a cryptic answer to every question. The gist seems that Bella now needs to die. Bella disagrees.

* * *

Sense returned to me slowly. The first thing that came back was sound. I heard something that sounded like the wind, a whistling sound. The next thing that came back was touch: I was bundled up in a blanket or quilt, even my head was covered, but not my face, so I tried opening my eyes.

What I saw still didn't make sense. The world was moving away from me in a blur of brown and green and white. I noted that my arms were pressed to my sides under the blanket. I tried to move them, but they seem to be pinned. My head was resting on a velvet cloth that covered some smooth stone.

As the world moved away from me, I noted that I didn't feel movement, or anything that went with the feel of movement. I wasn't on Dolly, so ...

_Dolly!_

The last things I saw before everything faded came back to me in an instant. I tried to categorize the memories into something I could piece together. The world, not waiting on me, continued to flash by, and things began to fall into place. Dolly. Blood. Lill—... _Rosalie!_

I dared to shift my head ever so slightly. The velvet cloth my head was resting on was red. The stone beneath it was Rosalie's shoulder. My nose grazed against her pure white neck. It was smooth, cold, and hard. _Just like marble,_ I reflected, and then added belatedly, _just like skin shouldn't be._

My head filled with a million questions, and I had to quiet my thoughts to concentrate on the most important ones. What to do?

Pa sometimes told me stories. These weren't the kinds of stories most fathers would tell most daughters; you know, the ones about princesses and dragons and suchlike. His stories were more practical: how to avoid collateral damage during gun play in a crowd ("hit the dirt, lie still, and cover your head with your hands and arms"), how to break out of a choke hold ("slam your heel to their knee, then scrape the shin when you stomp on their foot, hard" — _I didn't have time to put that piece of advice to good use!_ I reflected with regret), how to survive a hostage-taking ("Never give up hope, plan the escape _to safety_, not _from danger_, find the weakness, and save the fight for that point"). He told me of one story where a bank job went bad: the hostages were lined up on the floor and shot one by one. The moral of his story: "Bells, maybe number one nor number two saw what was coming, but if I was the third guy in that line, I would have been running, or kicking, or grabbing the hot barrels or something! Six people died that day in a neat little row. Remember that, kiddo, and fight for your life if it comes to that. You're not a sheep, so don't be herded to you death like those _idiots._" Pa never used harsh words, and this one he spat out. "You only get one shot at life, so never give up on it, 'cause there's no second chances in this game."

His law enforcement training wasn't what you'd call top-notch, but I was grateful for those stories now, because now I knew I had to plan. And, in order to plan, I needed to know where I was starting from, how long I had, and what the weaknesses were.

Where I was starting from was that I was alive, which is more than I could say for Dolly. A gun wasn't pointing at my head, so I didn't need to fight right this second, I guessed. I tested my arms again: pinned, so there wasn't much in me that could fight anyway, but when the time came down to it, I was going to be free, or I was going to make Rosalie pay dearly for whatever she was doing to me. I swore that for myself and for Pa: _I'm not going to waste your words, Pa!_ I didn't know how long I had, but I could find out better if I knew her plans. _Nothing ventured, nothing gained._

"So," I started conversationally, "why am I still alive?" I asked. That sounded reasonable: criminals often had God-complexes. I guessed Rosalie would _want_ to tell me her plan if she felt smug in her superiority. And, my question was innocuous as well; it didn't reveal anything from my side other than curiosity: the more helpless I sounded, the more likely her guard would drop.

"Ah! You've decided to skip the usual inanities of _where am I? what is happening? why did you attack me?_ and dive right to the heart of the matter. Edward was right: you are a smart girl, aren't you?" Rosalie responded evenly. There wasn't a hint of strain in her voice from carrying me, just over two hay bails' weight, nor from running flat out for who knows how long. In fact, she kept running as she answered, not even breaking stride. "It's a fair question, but there are several different ways to answer it. The pragmatic response is that I finally made use of a year's worth of practice on swine. I'm rather pleased with my control: not only did I avoid twisting your head right off your shoulders, but I also didn't crush your delicate wind pipe. It would have been so much more difficult for us to have a conversation in either of those cases, don't you think? ... And I thought I had wasted a year because I didn't need to drag any of those monsters elsewhere to deliver their just retribution. But I did get to use what I learned after all with you, and so here we are. Isn't that wonderful?" She sounded pleased with herself. I had heard and understood every word she said, and was grateful she was talking to me — it's much harder for kidnappers to act against hostages they've developed a relationship with — but the sum of her words were confusing. She was happy she didn't kill me so we could talk?

"And we're going to talk about ...?" _Keep her talking, develop the relationship. Keep her talking, develop the relationship._ I chanted to myself.

"Oh, whatever comes to mind. I had already mentioned we have so much to learn from each other, and I'd like to have a few answers. I need to know who you really are. Not who Edward thinks you are, not who you think your are, as both views are obviously very flawed, but know who _you really are_." She said this so casually, as if we actually _were_ going to sit over a cup of tea as I thought we would be doing at the Hale's house, not running soundlessly across a snow-covered forest. One inane set of questions refused go away from my thoughts: how did she run so fast and so quietly? Shouldn't her weight and mine break through the snow's crust? Where was the _crunch_ of her feet on the snow? I pushed these thoughts aside.

"You know, I was just ..." I began, recalling a very similar conversation I had had with myself about who I am. But I didn't get to continue, as I was interrupted mid-thought.

"No, I do _not_ know. And, amazingly, nor does Edward. This has never happened before — Edward not knowing — and this alone is interesting enough to explore further. But your silence extends outside your mind. You are utterly other than human. On top of that Edward refusal to eliminate you as a potential threat, and his absolute refusal to remove himself from the situation, along with his ravings about you connote something much deeper going on. I _will_ find out these things."

"And then, when you have these answers?" She still was making hardly any sense to me, but I knew she wouldn't be letting me go; that much was obvious. I was still waiting to hear her plan. Once I knew specifics, then I could start probing for weaknesses. Then I could fight.

She shrugged. "What always happens when mortals associate with immortals? You only need to look to Greek mythology for your answer."

She wasn't helping at all. There were so many different Greek myths about so many different things. I supposed I would have to venture a couple I knew to move things along: "What does Io being turned into a cow or Apollo's son riding his chariot have to do with me?"

"You've actually got it!" she responded. She sounded pleased. "Not so much the former, but the latter has everything to do with you, and that is, from time immemorial, what happens when mortals mingle their fates with immortals. Phaëthon's fate is yours."

"So, you're going to kill me?" I figured if I asked a direct question, I'd have a better chance of getting a direct answer.

She shrugged again. So much for that idea. But then she elaborated: "That is another way of asking your first question, so another way of answering that question is 'How can I kill you if you are already dead?'"

Not quite the elaboration that was at all illuminating, so I responded as best as I could: "Huh?"

"You made a choice, girl. Edward offered you the option to refuse his visit. Once you accepted, you were as good as dead. But even before that, the moment you and Edward met, you should have been dead. I agree: your smell is incredibly tantalizing for me, but for Edward, it complements his essence perfectly. If I hadn't taken your horse earlier, I'd find resisting taking your right here and now nearly impossible. How much more so for Edward, where your every heartbeat should have been an irresistible call. Edward, smug as ever, congratulates his self-control: _'Oh! that deplorable creature I am, I must not give into these cravings for one so pure and fair and ...'"_ Here her pitch took on a whining tone that nevertheless matched note for note Edward's voice. But then she continued, dismissively: "Well, you understand me: he goes on about you almost as much as he goes on about himself." She paused and grew thoughtful: "I, however, think at first he didn't wish to embarrass himself in front of Carlisle, and later ... it was indeed something about you. This is what I intend to discover."

It seems the more she spoke, the more lost I became, but what appeared clear to me was her insulting view of Edward. I wouldn't let that stand: "I beg your pardon, but I have no idea where you got such ideas, but I'm sure they are wrong! Edward has always shown me nothing but kindness and been the perfect gentleman. He has never acted in any way untoward! Ever!"

"Oh?" I could hear the disdain in her voice. "Not even the very first time he saw you at the courthouse? He managed to control himself, barely, but he was quite sure he had lost your good graces before ever getting a chance to earn them. And if didn't control himself quite so fiercely, he would be worrying about your graces. No, we would have had to have moved again."

To this I had no response, because she _did_ call attention to that time when this strange boy _had_ acted so very rudely.

She continued: "He worked so hard that next day to earn them back. And the excuses to us to justify attentions, you wouldn't believe! _'I can't hear her mind, so I must determine her character to ensure our safety.'_ None of us bought his line, or none of us _should have_, but that Edward, the favored child, can do no wrong in Carlisle's and Esme's eyes. They'd let their prodigal son get a way with murder — or so much worse: _you!_ — just to keep him in the family or to see him smile. The way they favor him is sickening to watch: _'Oh, Edward! Whatever makes you happy!'"_ Here Rosalie's body vibrated with a growl that would have had me backing away in fear if I hadn't been so firmly secured to her.

"So, he was allowed to call on you — _you!_ — and _invite you into our home_ drawing you further into our world until not even the dullest of eyes could have missed the signs. You certainly didn't. And still he fawned over you like you were some shiny new sports car. As if his own Aston Martin wasn't enough to keep him entertained! He should have destroyed you sooner, rather than later. Unfortunately, Edward claims he has too much will power to execute the sentence. I call his 'will power' his weakness. He's willing to risk everything, and our exposure, for his infatuation. I'm not. So you should have been dead from the first moment, you should have been dead each and every moment you spent with that foolish boy. You are most definitely dead now."

I could feel the air moving into and out of my lungs; I felt my heart beating in my chest. Maybe if I pointed out the obvious, she would stop talking in figures and start making sense? It was worth a try. "Okay, so you're talking 'dead' in the rhetorical sense, then, right? Otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation. I don't know any dead people who can talk." Here, I felt her body shake with an inexplicable snort. But I already had enough mysteries from her, so I pressed on with my point, hoping for at least a bit of clarity in the bizarre conversation: "Do you have any particular time in mind for me to go from theoretically dead to really dead?"

Rosalie didn't respond to that. I could almost feel her smile as she continued to run. "You are so calm discussing your fate." _My fate? Well, we'll see about that._ "Hm, I wonder: are you a little lamb being meekly led to the slaughter? Or is this calmness due to some manifestation of bravery?"

_Shucks!_ I didn't mean to hint at anything other than meekness, but she seemed wise to me. I hoped she was so confident that she would dismiss me as a threat in either case. But, feeling her vise-like grip so casually holding me in place, I wondered if her confidence wouldn't be misplaced, anyway.

She continued after a moment's reflection. "I'd really like to set you down and look into your face to see which one it is. But we mustn't be hasty now; we haven't gone far enough. That glorious scent of yours would leave an unmistakable beacon calling out for miles around — not that that would matter much: even after Edward returns, and even if his infatuation for you is such that he would feel some obligation to try to track us, he's so hopeless at these kinds of things that it surprising to me that he's even able to find food without it walking right across his path! At any rate, we'll have plenty of time to fix your character later. Yes, I must wait."

It sounded like she had convinced herself, but I had obtained my hint, that vital piece of information: she had said _plenty of time_. Whether that meant days or weeks, I didn't know, but it did mean there would be enough time to find a chink in her armor and expose it. Strong and fast as she was, _she had to sleep some time._ I could stay awake long enough to make my escape — possibly incapacitating her first, because I didn't think I could outrun her on foot — and save my life.

I masked my victory by closing out this line of thought: "Is this to be a one-sided conversation? Or, will I get 'to fix' your character, too?" I mimicked her rather esoteric way of speaking. A country girl could speak Town, too: I wasn't going to allow her to persist in some delusion that I was some simple bumpkin.

She continued flying silently through the woods. Then she chuckled lightly and answered unperturbed: "A conversation is not a conversation if it is one-sided. I hope you _do_ discover things about me. I'm looking forward to it."

"Yet you're still going to kill me? You talk about it so evenly, but I don't even know why I'm to die. Why would you do such a thing to me if I'm helping you understand me?" I asked incredulously. _What? Thanks for sharing and have a nice death?_

"Your fate was fixed already. By the time your heart stops beating, you'll understand why. As to why I'm your executioner," she shrugged again, "I've begun to see enough about eternity to know it may or may not be me: I just happen to be able to do this, whereas Edward refuses the task. You've been exposed to too much, and comprehended too much. You should consider yourself lucky, actually."

"Lucky!" I sputtered. She was truly twisted. In what possible world could all this — the kidnapping, the cat-and-mouse verbal games, and my promised death — be considered _lucky?_

"You love your father, don't you?" she seemed to change subjects on a dime. My head was spinning, trying to keep up.

"What?"

"You love your father, I could hear it in your voice when you two visited. You wouldn't want anything to happen to him, right?"

I did _not_ like the turn of this conversation. "You leave my Pa out of this ... this whatever it is you're doing!" I shouted fiercely. I tried to jerk my head back to give her a death glare to emphasize my seriousness, but I was too securely bound to her to make the gesture.

"Exactly. You knew all this could happen, that's why you came alone to confront me. It would have been devastating, wouldn't it, if he came along? What would have happened to him? He is rather facile — after all, _he_ wasn't the one who so blinded the Cullens with fascination, _you_ were — and I'm not in the mood to shepherd two. He would have been an unfortunate collateral casualty, and I've never murdered innocents yet. You were right and lucky not to take him."

I was outraged: "_I knew?_ How in the world could you possibly imagine that I could have envisioned anything like this happening?" But now that it did happen, I was _so_ relieved that I had left Pa out of this. She was right; I was lucky on that one.

"You didn't know? So you collected the clippings in your back pocket at random, then?"

I stewed. I wondered how long I had been out. _Long enough to find out more than enough of my secrets, I guess. _And I thought I was being so discreet. I guess I wasn't cut out for that place in the Nancy Drew club after all. Dang.

"But you are lucky in another way." She continued, having made her point and moved on.

Well, if she didn't bring up Pa again, I wouldn't encourage her thoughts in that direction; I was grateful about that, at least.

"How many people simply live their lives as automatons and die ignorant deaths?" she continued. "'Ignorance is bliss'? Why do so many people exist if there's no meaning in their dull and dreary lives. _Your_ life hasn't been dull since our arrival, and it won't be now — I can assure you of that! — and you will know who and what you are in its completion."

I remember my Pa quoting a Chinese curse: _May you live in interesting times._ I recall looking that one up, as people were always quoting at face value what they heard. The real quote went something like: 'The times produce the heroes.' I wasn't particularly interested in being a hero, but if that's what it took for me to make it out of this, then that's what I would become.

I didn't see her justification, though: "I don't see how me finding out that you faked your death to avoid getting married equates to my own death sentence."

She was silent for a moment as she ran. "You play the innocent very well. I wonder if you've gone so far as to believe yourself. We _do_ have much to learn from each other. Perhaps you have some things to learn from yourself, as well." she finally stated.

"Okay, but I also don't see how having my life snuffed out just when it's really starting makes me lucky either." If I was going to be the hero, I might as well start fighting now.

She snorted: "Do you think you have some special allotment on the number of days you can live? Babies die in their first week: Esme knows that. Children your own age die of flu: Edward knows that ... I know that too, but not because of flu. And people die in their old age, or at any age: Carlisle seen that in and out of the hospital. You're never too young to die today, and you're never too old to live another year."

She _had_ given me much to think about. Apparently, from what she had said earlier, the 'Hales' were the 'Cullens', after all, and apparently, they had had some tragedies in their own lives. But that didn't mean I would take the sentence on my life from this girl — this amazingly powerful, fast and enigmatic girl — lying down. I was not going to give up hope. _Pa, I'm never going to give up. I'm going to fight, and I'm going to get free!_

As we continued to glide silently through the forest, a heavy and sudden snow squall whirled large, fluffy flakes around us, blanketing the already fallen layer on the ground. Silence meeting silence.

I saw the flakes covering our already imperceptible trail. It was going to be absolutely impossible to track us. I would be getting no outside help in my predicament; everything now depended on me.

* * *

**Chapter end notes: **

Rosalie refers to training she received from Edward on how to use her strength delicately enough to handle humans so as not to crush them (accidently, that is). "Rosalie's Revenge" by the author Consultant by Day relates this training (they used pigs) and the rest of Rosalie's origins. Please read this story, it's a wonderful piece of fan-fiction.


	12. A Swim

**Chapter summary: **February, 1934, unknown forest hours from Ekalaka. Rosalie finally hears reason and lets Bella go. Or something like that. Too bad Bella smells so tasty, and not just to vampires! Oh, and swimming in February? Not such a great idea.

* * *

Rosalie continued to run interminably and silently. But, really, what was there to talk about? The weather? The "are you comfortable being kidnapped, and all"? That last one could be an awkward conversation, but it was impossible for me to picture Rosalie ever awkward in any situation. She said she wanted "to learn things from me". But I couldn't believe that: she had accused Edward of smugness. I hadn't seen a smug bone in his (perfect) body. It was _she_ who was smug. She probably just wanted to watch me twist uncomfortably under her gaze as she tortured me with embarrassing questions.

She spoke so comfortably about killing me, but I wondered if that, too, was part of her act. Would she suddenly turn squeamish when she determined it was my "time"? Suddenly, a fear pierced me: I hoped she wasn't planning on reenacting _1001 Nights!_ My life's story could last all of three minutes, and I was no Scheherazade: I didn't have the creativity to extend my story further than that. That's why my novels were such dear friends to me: my own life had none of the adventure they described. If she didn't supply a good deal of prompting, my "time" was going to come much sooner than she planned it would. Much sooner than I could afford if I were to find any way to escape. I was going to be in trouble.

Wait! I already _was_ in trouble!

It was that very moment we came to a sudden stop. Where we had stopped couldn't properly be called a clearing, but the trees seemed to be a bit thinner. Rosalie unwrapped me from her grasp and held me at arm's length by my own arms pressed against my sides. My feet floated above the ground, and it appeared she exerted no effort holding me thus. "Let me get a good look at you." she said as she scrutinized my face.

Great! I didn't even have time to powder my nose.

"Hmmm." she hummed as she tilted her head to one side, her face blank of any judgement. While I was still puzzling over what she could be thinking, she pulled me to her and planted a kiss on my cheek and set my feet down on the ground at arm's length from her. I fell through the snow's surface with an audible _crunch!_ Before I could even process what happened, she broke into a triumphant smile and sang, "Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

_"Wh..."_ was all I could begin to gasp out before she took two large steps back, still atop the snow's crust, turned and raced in a large circle around me shouting out what she thought to be her explanations.

"Who would have thought it would be _you_ that would free me from that ridiculous prison of that bed and those Cullens with their cloying constraints!" She flashed in and out of the trees around me, too fast for my head to follow.

"Who would have thought it would be _you_ who would get me away from that supercilious and superior Edward with his self-satisfied smirk and his haughty pronouncements!" She raced to a stop right in front of me, regarding me again.

"Finally, I'm free! I'm on my own, and it's all thanks to _you _— an ordinary girl in every way other than her sweet smell and meddling curiosity! I could just kiss you again!" In fact, she did, grabbing me by the arms, pulling me through the air and planting a cold kiss on my other cheek. She set me back down and positively beamed at me.

I didn't know where this overflowing affection came from, but I figured it was worth a try for a bid on my life: "So, you'll express your gratitude by letting me go, right?"

"Oh, no, no, no!" It _was_ worth a try. "You've earned our conversation and a bit of self-knowledge. Hm. I don't know if you would consider your particularities a blessing or a curse: if you had been a normal girl, you would never have attracted and held Edward's attention, leading to your fate now. But, then, who could ever crave normality?"

"So, you're saying that anything extraordinary leads to death?" Was she implying that what everyone around here, living quiet lives with quiet troubles, were living happy lives? The unquestioned life was the only life worth living?

"Of course not!" She responded scornfully. At least we had _something_ we agreed to, some kind of connection. _"Everything_ leads to death!" Oops! I was too hasty in my assessment. "After all, that's the ultimate end for all mortals. I'm saying everything that leads to us leads to that end much more expeditiously."

"And what exactly are you?" _Besides Miss-High-and-Mighty, that is._

She drew herself up straighter, if that was at all possible. "Not 'what' am I, but 'who' am I. And I am Rosalie Lillian Hale. I am not what my parents want me to be. I am not what the Cullens want me to be. I am not what _you_ want me to be, girl. None of you can box me into the confines of your expectations. No, I am strong. I am powerful. I am sufficient unto myself. And I am now free."

During this little speech I began to notice something. It was cold. It was _very cold!_ I could feel the cold from the snow-covered ground begin to seep through my boots and stockings and steel its way up my legs. Nothing made me more irritable. I shivered and pulled the quilt more tightly about me and snapped a response: "That's just great; I'm glad to hear it. A couple of things, though, _first_, my name isn't 'girl', it's 'Bella', okay?"

"Oh, 'Bella' is already dead ... _girl._" She was obstinate, but so was I.

"_And second!"_ I was shouting loudly now. _"Second, _it's pretty hypocritical of you to declare your independence when you've drug me here against my will with the intention of killing me. Last I checked, you're boxing me in pretty tightly, something you just railed against for yourself. You glory in your own freedom, but keep me prisoner! You can't have two sets of standards, one for yourself and one for everybody else. Or if you did, what would that make you? What do you think of that, huh?"

I would call her actions hypocritical, but I wasn't going to call _her_ a hypocrite to her face. I was pretty sure, however, that the picture I drew for her left little to doubt about my thoughts.

"Heh!" She _was laughing at me!_ "You are right! How awful of me!" She blinked a few times and simpered, fooling not even herself in her insincerity. Then a wicked smile slowly spread across her face. "Okay, then, brave girl, you're free to go." She waved vaguely into the darkening forest. I looked about me and swallowed as she spelled my doom. "On one condition, though, if you come back to me, or if I need to rescue you, then it's because it means you can't make it on your own, that you _do_ need me to survive. In that case, _you are entirely mine! Your name, your obedience, your very self. Everything!"_ She leaned in, towering over me, hammering me with the blows of her words. But then she relaxed and smiled easily: "So, off you go, then. Have fun!" She laughed gaily, as if she were sending me off on an adventure, and she couldn't wait for it to start.

"Fine!" I shouted at her, with more bravery than I had and turned away from her to march off into the woods, into my death. _Die or stay with that, that, that ..._ but then I didn't have the words to express my anger, so I became inarticulate, even in my thoughts ... _I'd rather die!_

"Just one thing before you go," I had planned to storm off, but her words froze me to the spot, "I'd like to have quilt that I lent to you returned. I've grown rather fond of the pattern, don't you know." This just got better and better, didn't it? I was cold already, and the quilt had surrounded me in a layer of my own heat.

But my pride stung too much. I unwrapped myself from it — I could feel the heat dissipating into the evening air; it felt like my life was going with it — turned back around and handed the quilt to her. Or I would have, if she didn't have my basket in her hands, holding it out.

How in the world did she carry that _and me_ all this way?

"Aren't you the least bit hungry or _thirsty?"_ she sang, thoroughly enjoying this moment.

I narrowed my eyes, "No, thank you." I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. "I gave those to you; you enjoy them. Good bye, _Rosalie._" I spat out her name in an angry hiss. I was livid. And, with that, I turned about and did march off into the woods, boiling.

"Well, at least you're calling me by my name on purpose this time." She was walking alongside me, wrapped in her quilt. She inhaled a breath from the fabric and sighed contentedly. I fumed and turned perpendicular to the direction I had been walking. When one storms off to be by oneself, one doesn't need a gadfly for company. _Couldn't she get the hint?_

Apparently she couldn't, she turned as well. I tucked my chin into my shirt, wishing I had a hat. _Rosalie_ didn't have a hat. The cold didn't seem to bother her. As I looked down, folding into myself more as I walked, I noticed something terrifying. Well, _another_ something terrifying:_ she was barefoot. _She was walking through the snow without shoes, and she didn't look the least bit affected. Watching us walk along, it was more correct to say that _I_ was walking through the snow as I _crunch-crunched_, breaking the frozen surface with each footstep. _She glided_ over the top of it, marking, but not breaking, the surface with a feather-touch.

I didn't see how this was possible. She looked like she may have weighed more than me. She was taller, and had a better figure — _a much better figure_ — but she didn't trudge like my plodding footsteps did. No, each placement of her foot was exquisitely cat-like, it was placed purposefully but with such grace as to make a dancer envious. I would have needed to watch my feet to carry off even something halfway to what she was doing, but her carriage was perfection: her shoulders were erect and back, chin raised proudly, and her eyes were on me, not her feet, amused, watching me watching her.

She continued talking, uninterrupted by my change in direction, uninterrupted by my musings, uninterrupted by this _damn little breeze blowing right into my eyes_. "It was what tipped me off back at the house, you know, you called me 'Rosalie' when you were irritated with me, don't you remember?"

I didn't remember; I had always been careful to think of her and to call her as 'Lillian'. But I didn't see the point of discussing this with the kidnapper I was in the process of walking away from. "D-d-don't you have somewhere to go over in th-th-that d-d-direction?" I jerkily pointed back to where we had come from. I _really _hated this cold and wished I had a jacket, or a fire, or four walls surrounding me. Or all of those things.

"Oh, you poor thing!" she purred. "You're lost already!" She pointed in a different direction than the one I had pointed. No, she didn't point. I had pointed, but she lifted her arm languidly and gestured with an open hand. "Didn't you mean that way? East-southeast?" she asked innocently.

Every single thing she did crushed my soul into a further spiral of loss in my own insignificance. Part of the reason that I was so desperate to get away from her, besides the whole kidnapping and murdering thing, was not only I was a moth being burnt in her flame, but that everything she did made me aware of this. Being nothing is one thing, knowing it is another, having it brought to your attention, though? I couldn't stand being around her, my own insignificance grating painfully against her ... well, significance. Her magnificence.

Instead of answering her obviously rhetorical question, I saved my breath for more important things. I couldn't actually think of what important things I was saving my breath for, because I had a difficult time thinking at all. I wondered if the cold would freeze the thoughts in my brain.

"The way I see it," she continued. There was just no stopping her. "You have two options. The first obvious one is hypothermia. Remember, keep moving. The moment you stop and lie down, you're dead."

"Th-th-th-th-tha..." _nks for the encouragement_, but I couldn't get that out.

"You're welcome." She didn't wait for me to finish. "The other option is to be eaten by predators, who, like most animals in winter, are famished. Remember here, that predators like to attack from behind, avoiding their prey's claws and fangs. So, for example, the grey wolves — beautiful animals! — will encircle you to do just that. Don't let that happen! Back yourself against a tree, so you can tear their heads off as they are forced to come to you from the front."

"Grrr!" I extended my arms, claw-like, and attempted a growl, imagining her scenario. The best way to describe my pantomime was 'feeble'.

"Very good! Mountain lions mark their territories here, too. They tend to pounce from above. So keep a sharp look out in all directions." she encouraged. "Okay, I'm going to go scouting around. Remember, keep moving; it keeps the blood flowing. Try to last another twenty minutes for me, okay?"

With that, she bundled me back into the quilt with economical movements. "A present, just for you. Earn it by staying alive for me." And she disappeared before I could refuse it.

I couldn't have refused it, anyway. The quilt was noticeably colder than when I had handed it to her, but the remaining heat from my body that it trapped within its folds was a blessed relief, giving me a bit of strength.

Keep moving.

I hadn't been lying to her before: I wasn't 'the least bit hungry', as she had asked, taunting me with the offering of my biscuits: I was starving. I regretted turning down that offer. The cold was sapping my strength, and I was so hungry that I began to cramp up painfully.

Ignore it. Keep moving.

Time passed. Tears trickled down my cheeks from anger and loss. I wasn't going to make it. I didn't even know how to get back now, for, when I risked a look behind me, I saw my footsteps curving away behind me erratically around the trees, but, horribly, disappearing under the lightly falling snow. I began to curse myself for my stupid pride. _Pride proceedeth the fall. _I wasn't at all religious, but I began to pray that Rosalie would come to get me, of all things, that she would find me. I was going crazy: I was wishing my captor would rescue me.

She wouldn't find me, though. _I_ couldn't find me. I was dead. Keep moving. _Please, God, keep moving._

Why? _Don't ask that, just keep moving!_

The trees started to thin in front of me. Go for the clearing? No trees meant nothing to block a bone-chilling breeze. But I could go forward without thought of running into something as the darkness descended so quickly. I'd be just like me to stumble blindly right into a tree and be covered by a pile of snow that would be shaken free from the branches. I really didn't make a decision, I just plodded forward, beyond thinking or hope.

Then I heard something that froze my blood. That is, froze my blood more_._ A howl. Something was hungry. It was answered by another howl, and then another.

Correction: _Somethings_ were hungry.

The howling got closer. I found some motivation to pick up speed. I looked behind me, but I didn't see anything. I pressed forward, I was in the clearing now and broke into as fast as a trot as I could manage, but then I was quickly pulled up short. The clearing wasn't all that encouraging. The ground beneath my feet suddenly dropped off into the darkness. I heard the sound of moving water from below. _Not a good direction that way!_ I turned around ...

... and looked death right in the face. Wolves. They were coming out of the trees, not 50 feet from me. I didn't see how many, as there were more than four of them. They were crouched down, slinking forward and growling.

They moved closer, and I took a small step back. I could feel the empty air behind me where there was no more ground. The wolves continued their approach. As they growled and panted, showing their teeth, I could almost see the smiles on their faces.

Somehow, the look reminded me of Rosalie's.

The wolves fanned out around me. I took another baby step back: I had no more ground to give. I looked from wolf to wolf, wondering how I could fend off an attack of even one of them.

As I thought this, the biggest one, facing me at the head of the semicircle coiled and then pounced, neck extended, mouth wide open, teeth glistening, aiming right for my neck.

Three things happened in rapid succession. I screamed and literally fell back, forgetting there was nothing behind me. I had stepped back into nothingness. As my fall began, I heard an oath uttered in an unmistakeable musical tone. Then, immediately following that, the attacking wolf burst apart at the seams to become Rosalie, of all things. I knew then I had lost my mind, dreaming of an impossible rescue from a sure death like that. Smooth, solid hands reached out to me. They were warm? They wrapped me in slick arms. Rosalie's face, covered in blood, above mine, looked down at me in annoyance, and then suddenly the sky twisted around, and I was looking down at her. The blackness raced up to me.

_"Hold your breath!"_ she screamed.

I complied. Then I heard a loud splash and felt water explode away from us. Then I felt cold-wet guillotine me, as the blackness surrounded and then consumed my very being.

_Agony! _And then I felt no more.


	13. Haute Couture

**Chapter summary: **Rescuing a fragile human _through _a wolf can leave clothes rather icky, especially if you're a vampire. What to do? But there's a whole new problem making the fashion handicap suddenly trivial. Time to hunt. Fourth time this week, dammit!

* * *

I woke up in my bed and felt the warmth of the stove from the kitchen fill the whole house. Pa was cooking a stew or a soup. It smelled incredibly good. I sighed with relief. I couldn't believe how vivid the dream was that I had last night: it left me exhausted. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes as I called out: "Pa? You would not believe the nightmare I had last night!"

Then things started not to add up. My throat felt really sore. I wasn't wearing my nighty — _I wasn't wearing any clothes! _— and my hands and arms felt like ice; my legs were cold, very cold, too. I _was_ wearing a bonnet that was wet and warm. I had never in my life worn a bonnet. Also, my nethers were covered with a cloth that was wet and warm, too.

Oh, God! I really hoped I hadn't embarrassed myself last night, but the dream wasn't _that_ sort of dream. The last time I had that sort of dream, Ma was still here. I helped her with laundry that day, feeling mortified with shame and with the extra work I had caused her.

I took my hands away from my eyes, and they came to rest on a blanket. I was bundled up in it like a mummy. That was strange...

But all of these details lost their significance very quickly when I registered what greeted my eyes.

"Oh, really? I'd be very interested to hear about it." Musical voice. White face. Eyes the color of apple juice, long flowing hair the color of straw.

_Rosalie._

I shut my eyes and turned away. Oh God, oh God, oh God! Please, just make this go away. _Please!_ I tried to control my breathing; I was hyperventilating. I couldn't stop gasping even after a few seconds of trying to calm myself, but Rosalie continued speaking, either expecting or ignoring my reaction, or, probably, not caring: "But it didn't sound like you were having nightmares last night. You sounded like you enjoyed taking care of your horse ... Dolly, was it? You sounded like you admired Edward's hand writing. And he got you flowers, did he? You liked those. Or was it you admired the giver? You know that you talk in your sleep, don't you? It made the night rather entertaining for me, much more so than how I expected it to be."

I hadn't thought, after what I first saw, that my day could have gotten worse than that. It turns out I was wrong. I covered my face with my arm, and I found out, much to my disappointment, that I _couldn't_ die of embarrassment. What made things even worse was that somehow I knew that right now was just the beginning, and things were only going to get worse. I couldn't imagine living through that. But I suddenly realized I had an out.

"Look, you've said you were going to kill me, right? Would you please do that right now?" I spoke as distinctly as I could, as I was still turned away and was covering my face with everything I could find.

It was quiet for one second; I could almost hear the wheels turning in Rosalie's head. Oops! maybe she was going to take me up on my offer. Suddenly, my brilliant idea didn't seem all that smart. _This wasn't going to help in my escape plans ..._

When she spoke, she spoke quietly and calmly, but her voice rung with something like anger. "Last night, I had to save your life three times in less than one hour. I expended quite a bit of effort to get you, breathing, to this point. And, as much as I would love to take you right now, I am _not_ going waste everything on a girl's silly whim."

Saved my life three times? I turned back to her to ask her about what happened, "Wh..." But my breath left me in a whoosh as if I had been punched in the stomach. For the second time today I had opened my eyes, and for the second time today what they saw shocked me beyond articulation. As predicted, my day did take an inexplicable turn for the worse.

Rosalie stood before before me. She wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing. Not one. I couldn't help but notice, incidentally, that she was a natural blond. I really, really, _really,_ did not want to know this fact. Then I noticed after a time when I could gather my thoughts that I was staring at her open-mouthed. That's when I turned away again, squeezing my eyes shut as hard as I could possibly squeeze them, fully burying my head under my arms.

It didn't help. The image of her was burned into my retinae. All the things I had thought about her weren't exactly wrong, but they paled in comparison to the reality of what I just saw. She wasn't the personification of the Greek goddess Diana on Earth. No, Diana would kill to have a body like Rosalie's.

I thanked God that, even though I was in a similar state of undress, at least my modesty was wrapped in a blanket, first of all, and, second of all, modesty aside, I was thankful that I was covered, because if I was standing beside her in a similar state of undress, I would have saved her the trouble of killing me. If she wouldn't have killed me, my shame would have done the job. I was nothing next to her. Nothing.

After I worked on my breathing, again, I found I had to ask a different question than the one I was going to ask. "What happened to our clothes?"

"Ah, yes: that." She sounded annoyed. "First you decide to be wolf pack food, then you decide to stop breathing _and_ stop your heart after going for a swim in the Belle Fourche, _and then_ you decide to be so tantalizingly tempting with the taste of you in your mouth while I'm breathing air back into your lungs as you're wearing those clothes covered in wolf blood. Do you know how fortunate you are I had just found this abandoned cabin and had started a fire? I knew you would be cold, but I didn't expect you would be going for a swim. What is it with you? Are you Fortuna herself? First you conjure us, then the cold and hungry wolves, then this cabin. What will you bring forth next?"

_What?_ "Ummm," I hummed into my pillow, "I really don't..." I started helpfully, but she continued, ignoring me.

"Much as I tried only to push air into you as I massaged your heart, still some of your saliva entered my mouth. I had to leave and breath clean air _three times_ during your little resurrection. Each time it got harder. You couldn't comprehend what a relief it was, the sound of your cough, your heart restarting, and the air filling your lungs from the movement of your diaphragm. But then there were your clothes, reddened with blood as if you were my own little present, gift-wrapped. It was almost too much! Clothes covered in blood proved to be very distracting for me, so I had to get rid of them. The remaining shreds of them are by now miles downstream in the river you so inadvisably decided to dive into."

"I didn't decide to..." I tried to work in a word edgewise.

It wasn't working: "I am trying very hard not to be angry about that, and I am trying very hard not to be angry _with you_ about that. Do you know my gown was a Chanel? Coco _herself_ designed that pattern! Where am I going to find clothes like that in this backwater part of the country?"

She _had_ to be making some kind of joke at my expense. Coco? Was she making up a silly name to shame me further in my embarrassment? But she didn't sound amused or silly. She sounded angry. I finally dared to turn my head and risked a peek at her through interlaced fingers, looking only at her face. She looked furious.

"Where?" she continued, "I'll tell you where! Nowhere! Canvas and denim and flannel is what you'll find here in Podunk U.S.A. _Haute Couture? _They don't even have ready-to-wear here! Has this area even moved into statehood? Or is it still a territory? God! I can't wait to get out of this stinking cabin filled with the stench of simmering pronghorn!" Here she waved at the stove, and my stomach clenched in sympathy. I groaned with pain. I don't remember the last time I had eaten. _"I'm going to need to wash my hair at least three times to get thi..."_

But then something happened. Rosalie looked like she was in the midst of her tirade, just warming up to the atrocities that had been heaped upon her by me and by rural American, when she suddenly stopped and stared at my midsection, her face frozen in blank shock. It looked like her pupils were completely dilated — in fear? — because her eyes had gone from yellow/gold with red-flecks to pitch black. She swayed in place and stumbled a step toward me.

I had never imagined that Rosalie, grace herself, would ever stumble. I looked at her in amazement as she came closer to me; she appeared to be moving in an hypnotic trance. But then she jerked back very quickly as if she were physically pulling herself away from me, swallowed hard, and startled me by throwing her head back and letting go with a sharp, keening scream. She ran out of the cabin in a blur, leaving the door wide open in her rush to escape. The winter air slammed into me even through I was bundled into the blanket.

I shook my head, not understanding a single thing that happened. First she was angry at me, then she ran away into the winter day stripped of her 'Coco' Chanel gown? What had scared her that much?

It looked like I'd better close the door, as I had no idea when Rosalie'd be back. If Rosalie'd be back. _As if I'd be so lucky_, I muttered to myself darkly as I unwrapped myself from my blanket and got up unsteadily from the bed. However, my own weakness from events from before — apparently I had nearly died three times recently — and the stomach cramps caused by hunger immediately knocked me over into a fetal ball by the bed, further exposing me as the cloth covering my midsection fell somewhere beside me.

"Ah!" The hunger cramps really hurt. It was _really_ cold on the floor. And I was naked. But by this point I was way beyond caring. I crawled to the front door and shut it. A minor victory and a major relief.

I scootched away from the draft creeping from under the door and let the heat of the stove penetrate me again. Remembering my cold walk followed by a cold swim yesterday — was it yesterday? — the heat was a welcomed relief. I hoped Rosalie would be planning to keep me past summer, because an escape anytime soon was just too discouraging to consider right now. Then there was a problem of how to escape, as exposure to the elements seemed to be a major concern of the moment.

For me, that is. It didn't seem to affect Rosalie's decision one bit to bolt from this house all at once in her all together.

I knew I had to get up from the floor and back under the blanket and get something to eat and something to drink — _I was parched! _— and ... but I lay on the floor. I thought back over what just happened: Rosalie's rant and then her pupils widening in fear. What caused that? Suddenly I was transported to a memory back home.

...

I was thirteen years old. Ma had left years ago, and I was still going to school, so I was at home reading my history book, doing my homework on the Great War.

"Pa," I asked, "did you fight in the War?"

Pa looked at me and for a second I thought I had said something wrong. I thought he would respond the way he usually did, with silence. But after a time, he did speak, quietly. "Ya, Bella, I fought in the war." He looked away for a minute, then he looked back at me, waiting.

I looked down at my book, then I looked back at him. I guessed I had his permission. "What was it like? What was it really like?"

Pa got up. I thought he was leaving. Sometimes, those days, he went out alone into the surrounding woods for a ride on Patches. It still hurt him, even years later, Ma leaving us. But then he didn't head for the door: he went to his rolltop desk, dug through the ever-present pile of papers to some particular piece toward the bottom that he seemed to know by feel. It looked like a letter. He unfolded it and read it out to me. It was a poem, I guessed, because I could almost hear the rhyme and cadence. Pa had never read a poem to me before or since.

I don't remember particularly how it went, but it was something about the boys crying "The gas! The gas!" and one boy not getting his mask on in time and drowning in his own blood on a wagon they threw him on.

It was so sad! But Pa read it so calmly. I asked him if he wrote that. He told me no. I asked him if that really happened. "Ya, Bella, that happened sometimes."

"It didn't happen a lot?"

"No."

I thought, then: "Why not?"

He looked at me. "The gas was like the war, Bella. It didn't care if your name was Charlie Swan or Jerry Kraut. When the Jerries set out the mustard gas, it was just as likely to blow back on their boys as it was to kill ours."

"My history book doesn't talk about this. It just talks about guns and battles and trenches."

"There was that, too." Pa answered, nodding, "But mostly there was the cold and the waiting and the hunger and the boredom. It made the surprises all the more awful."

"Surprises?" I asked.

"Ya. The sudden gun-fights, the mustard gas ... but at least with those you had fair warning from the reports of shots or screaming. Sometimes you didn't have that. Like if a sniper targeted you, like one did to the boy on lookout right next to me. His name was Jerry, ironically: Jerry Jones. We used to tease him about his name all the time, ask him to tell us when his brothers were going to open up. He always laughed it off, telling us he'd check. There he was, one minute he was smoking a fag, the next minute the cigarette and half his face was gone. We both hit the dirt at the same time; I was fast. But the difference between us was that he never got up again."

He reflected on that close call for a minute and then continued. "There were other surprises, too, like the other gasses they used."

"What other gasses, Pa?"

"I don't rightly know what it was. The Jerries were always experimenting. But we were in a troop movement one day, and suddenly our point man stopped checking back. We threw on our masks — it was a reflex action for those who made it out — when we got to him, his name was Sean McClellan, he was sitting upright, mouth and eyes wide open in shock, his pupils were so wide they covered his irises. All you could see of his eyes was black, as if you were looking right into where his soul used to be. It was one of the scarier things I saw, because before his eyes were a pretty green. Sean was quite the looker. He would be the first to charm a French country girl right into his, ah, heart. So, seeing his eyes all black like that ..." Pa stopped and shook his head.

"What happened to Sean?"

Pa shrugged. "He was dead, of course."

I thought for a while. "Pa, why did you fight? Was it because of _pro patria mori?" _I asked him, remember the last words of the poem he read me from the motto that urged him and his friends into what he described.

He shook his head. "No, Bella, not even then. What does that history book call the War?"

"The Great War."

"What else?"

"The World War."

"What else?"

"The War to end all wars."

"That's why I fought, Bella. We've learned our lesson now. We better have. Never before was there a war like that. And there never will be again. We fought so that no generation after ours would ever fight again. It was my price to pay, and I paid it, so you won't have to. Your husband or your son won't have to come home in a box."

...

_Gas?_ I took a tentative sniff. I didn't feel fear — that is, any _more_ fear. My heart was hammering a mile a minute, but that was pretty much how it went now, anyway. I didn't smell anything odd either. But Pa didn't tell me if it had a smell, whatever it was. He didn't tell me if mustard gas had a smell, either, but I imagined that it would smell like rust and salt as my lungs filled with my blood.

Pa's stories! I shivered, perhaps it was a bit from the cold on the floor. _Time to get up and eat something!_ my stomach pains and the aroma from the food reminded me of that. I got up, headed toward the bed to wrap myself back into the blanket, staggering as best I could.

On the way, my foot kicked the rag that had been my loincloth. I noticed that it was a ripped piece of my denim Levis. There was blood on it. _Rosalie wiped the blood from herself with this rag?_ I asked myself. But there wasn't that much blood on it, and the blood looked relatively fresh, still a bit wet. There were the tell-tale spots that I recognized from my pads from each of the months past.

In all the excitement of the Platt/Hale/Cullen family and Lillian/Rosalie, I hadn't been keeping track of the days. My stomach cramps from today weren't just from hunger. My unusual irritability and proceeding exhaustion should have told me the obvious.

I had gotten my period today.

* * *

**Chapter end notes:**

The poem Charlie reads to Bella is "Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen in response to the poem of the same name by Roman poet Horace used some 2000 years later to urge young men into World War I.

The first line reads: "_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori._" My translation: "It is sweet and right to die for one's country."

Owen fought and died in the Great War.


	14. No Talking to Vampires!

**Chapter summary:** Food everywhere, but Bella can't eat it. Her clothes, all of them, were bloodied in the recent wolf encounter and are now gone. And let's not talk about her period, please? How could it get worse? Hint: don't provoke an irritated vampire.

* * *

I sat at the table, nibbling at the biscuits I had made for Rosalie, soaking them, as much as I could, in the soup simmering on the stove. I would have been happy to have the soup straight up. But, no bowls, no cups. And my hands weren't any good at lifting the cast-iron pot off the stove so I could drink from that. Well, they wouldn't be good for anything after I tried something like that. I had burned my pinky on the stove back home when I was nine, tripping and falling into it. Watching the flesh bubble like it was liquid as the heat burned me was a vivid memory that had taught me a healthier respect for stoves than my parents ever could. And not for lack of trying on their part. I looked at my pinky. It had been so long ago, there wasn't even a mark to show for it, but I remembered.

Food: I couldn't wait anymore. Rosalie had been gone for hours. I finished off the soup-soaked biscuit in my hand.

I was semi-wrapped in the blanket, my bare back facing the stove with my front covered lightly. The slightly bloody rag that was the loincloth now was more bloody, acting as the only thing catching my discharge. It was a compromise. I figured Rosalie would kill me — that is, kill me _more _— if I stained the blanket, so I kept using the rag.

I thought about a joke of me using a rag on the rag. But I wasn't, you know, in a jokey mood at present, having shred that ridiculous bonnet on my head the first hour after Rosalie had fled. That relieved a bit of my frustration, but the cramps and my sensitivity were a dull and ever-present reminder. An annoyance, and I was annoyed.

But that didn't mean I wasn't adding 2 and 2 together. My sum was currently 22, not 4, as it should be. Nothing was as it should be anymore. I got another biscuit from the basket, stood up and carefully dunked it in the pot of soup. I sat down on the rag carefully again, rearranging the blanket around me as best I could. _Chin over the table, Bella, we don't want the stink of the soup falling from the biscuit onto the blanket._ If I was annoyed, my condition seemed to make our resident vampire more than ready to explode at anything. _'Coco' Chanel gown, indeed!_

Yes. _Vampire._ Rosalie had to be. _She just had to be._ It didn't make any sense, but there was a whole lot more to that theory than anything else I could imagine. I had blocked what she was doing to Dolly — _kissing her neck_ — up to now. But bloody clothes being a distraction? The "taste of me" in my mouth? My first cramps sending her into a frenzy? Her cold, hard and pale skin? The way she seemed to float on the snow? The "reason" I needed to die?

There were things that didn't add up. Weren't vampires supposed to have fangs? And sleep during the day? Wasn't sunlight supposed to destroy them? And running water, too? Rosalie didn't have fangs, that I could see, and she seemed fully up and about during the day and did "take a swim" with me.

No, wait, she was out during the day, but I had never yet seen her, or seen any of her family, in sunlight. Edward had always visited me after dusk, and Rosalie and I had our run through the forest under heavy clouds and snow. So maybe sunlight was a factor after all.

There were other things, though. Could she have come into this house without an invitation? Vampires weren't supposed to be able to do that, right? And couldn't she just put me under her power if she wanted to make off with me? Didn't vampires do that? Rosalie sure didn't do that to me, because I sure as shooting wasn't walking around under her spell. In fact, I caused a bit of frustration on her part, I recalled, relishing the outbursts from her that I had provoked. She hadn't reacted like I wanted her to when I made that crack about hypocrisy, but I hoped I set her ego back a peg or two.

I took another bite of the biscuit. I had read _Dracula_ and then, out of curiosity, _Carmilla_. I shuddered; I hoped _Carmilla_ wasn't going to be the model for my situation. Rosalie didn't match much of what was in the books, anyway. I wasn't paying much attention to those stories as I read them, however, so it was hard for me to recollect and tell. Gothic wasn't me: I had read them as a diversion from my usual diet of Edwardian romances. But there had to be something that would be a give away. I now wished I had paid more attention while I was reading them for the characteristics of vampires, but, really, how could I have expected this? I could have been as easily been reading a story about werewolves, for goodness sake. Should I have absorbed every detail about that? That would have been a complete waste of time! Thinking about werewolves brought me back to the recent attack, and I shuddered, although I wasn't as cold as I was that night — last night?

_Focus, girl!_ Great, I was calling myself _girl_ now, too. _Dammit! Focus, __Bella__!_ Vampires. We were thinking about vampires. And Rosalie/Carmilla. I shuddered again, thinking about how close the names 'Lillian' and 'Carmilla' sounded.

I was going off the deep end. Back to just vampires. What made them tick? Besides blood, that is, as we had already established that one.

Wait. They didn't tick. Undead. They were undead. So, no pulse, right? And mirrors. They couldn't be seen in mirrors. I looked about me, finishing my third, or was it fourth or fifth? biscuit. There was a small mirror by the sole sink by the stove. I stood to get it.

_Thump._

I sat back in the seat heavily and waited for my heart to restart. I felt a draft coming from the direction of the front door, but when I looked over to it, it was closed. There were three rather largish neatly folded piles of clothes on the floor a few feet inside the house. _How did..._

_Tap. Tap. Tap._

I spun around quickly toward the bed. "Jesus-God!" I cried. I really didn't think all these heart-stoppages were healthy for me. The window by the bed framed Rosalie who, I could see, was now wearing a red and black checkered collared flannel shirt. From what I could see, she looked good in it. She actually made the flannel look good. But I don't think she would appreciate a "ready-to-wear" comment. Not just now, at any rate. She pointed toward the clothes piles and pointed toward me. "Put something on before you catch your death of cold." She commanded in a voice that I had no difficulty hearing through the window. Then she disappeared.

"Uhn, Rosalie? Rosalie!" I shouted.

She was gone, but then a second later, she was back at the window. _"What!"_ Her eyes were back to their golden color, but she looked really irritated.

"Um, I'm sorry, but, um ..." I was really embarrassed.

_"Well? WHAT!"_ She didn't appear to be in the mood to entertain circumspection.

"I _really_ need to, you know, go..." I could feel my blush and my eyes hit the floor.

"You aren't going anywhere! You are staying right there, this is our new home for, well, for a while." She didn't get it. Did vampires have to go, at all? The gothic horror stories really didn't cover this.

"No, I mean ... _go._" Dammit, I would just have to show her. I sat up a bit, grabbed and then lifted the bloodied rag to eye level.

Not to my eye level, because they were tightly fixed on my toes.

I heard an exasperated sigh, followed by a series of angry mutters, sounding something like: "What next?"

"Well, since you asked," What had I to lose, after all? "I am really _thirsty,_ and ..."

_"You're thirsty?"_ she sounded incredulous and amused all at once.

"Yes, _parched,_ and, thank you for making the soup, but I can't really eat it because I don't have a bowl. I guess a cup would actually solve both problems, as I could make water from the snow outside."

She stared at me, then she slapped her hand to her head and slunk out of sight. _"Anything else, while you're at it?"_ I heard float through the window.

"Well, yes?" Again I heard the sigh. "The fire's kind of dying, and I don't have wood to stoke it, and thank you for starting it, but I think it'll go out soon, and I think it'll be more trouble to restart it than ..."

"Okay, _okay, OKAY!_ I think I've got the idea!" She reappeared at the window, looking quite put out. "Here's what's going to happen. You are going to get dressed. I'm going to bring you to the outhouse. Wait! First I'll give you a drink of water. You are going to give me that rag. Then I am going to put you back in this cabin. I'll also give you some firewood. You are not to speak to me, do you understand me?" She shot off these orders rapid fire, like a sergeant in battle, I supposed.

No talking. Got it. I nodded my head.

_"Good girl."_ she growled. I grimaced at the "girl" part. What? Did I earn a pat on the head?

While I was contemplating this, I felt a breeze, I looked to the door, but it was still closed. There was a noise by the stove. Rosalie was there with a metal pail. She undampened the stove and then opened its front doors, with her ungloved hand, I noticed, and reached into the dying fire. With her hand. And pulled out ember after ember, placing them into the pail.

With her unscathed hand.

I sat, staring, right next to her. She looked over at me and grimaced.

I was getting on Rosalie's happy side just all the time, it seemed. She closed the stove back up, readjusted the dampener and disappeared out the front door. I shook myself back to reality, and headed toward the pile of clothes. Before I could get there, Rosalie was back inside. Apparently, I wasn't working fast enough, because she picked me up and placed me back in my chair by the table, whisking away the blanket, which magically appeared on the bed.

Before that registered, that is, before I could blush or cover myself, I found myself wearing a cotton tee, and then a wool sweater.

I didn't see this happening; Rosalie moved just too fast for me to follow anything in my stunned state. I pushed my hands through the tee's and then the sweater's arms.

My feet were suddenly out in front of me and then encased in knee-high woolen socks.

Wool. Ugh. Scratchy. Well, I guess it's warm...

The red, black, blue and white form suddenly transformed from a blur to a statue. Red and black checkered flannel shirt, form-fitted denim jeans, covered by laced up leather boot clothed Helen of Troy. A perfect statue of a runway model posing in lumberjack clothes. Sexy lumberjack clothes.

_Wait. What did I just think?_ I meant the clothes looked good on her, fitting to her as if tailor-made for her specifically. That's what I meant: she looked good. Well, she looked great. No, I meant...

I was blushing so furiously that I thought blood might seep out of the pores in my cheeks. _Thank God she can't read my mind._

The statue looked over at me quizzically and then raised an eyebrow.

Oh, my God! She _can _read my mind. I am so dead. My breath picked up as Rosalie shrugged, confirming my deadness. She walked over to the stove again and reached into the simmering pot of soup, cupping the liquid in her hands.

"Thueeeh zegondz." She gasped out through gritted teeth.

Um, what?

After a beat, she walked over to me and put her fingertips to my bottom lips.

Oh! _Three seconds!_ I smiled with recognition, held up my hand and counted to three with my fingers. She tilted her cupped hands toward me, and I took in a small sip of antelope soup heaven.

She pulled her hands a couple of inches away from my mouth. "Tuwha haat?" again through gritted teeth.

The soup was hot, but pleasantly so, not at all scalding hot, as it was in the pot. I shook my head no. She returned her cupped hands to my lips, tilting the liquid toward me. I finished it greedily, never taking my eyes off hers. She noticed. She raised her chin once, as if to say: _drink up._

"Mohrha?" she grated out, pointing at the pot. I nodded. She held up three fingers, and I nodded again in understanding. This serving transpired in complete silence. When I finished that serving, she simply pointed at the pot with a raised eyebrow.

I hesitated. I was hungry, but I needed to go. I shook my head. She looked at me, shrugged, went back to the pot. I thought was was going to get another serving, whether I wanted it or not. I could see the _"mother knows best"_ attitude just dripping off the flannel. But then she surprised me: she grabbed the basket from the table, putting it on the floor near the pot, then reached into the soup with one hand and pulled out an arm's length of meat. She expertly ripped it into four hand-sized chunks, depositing them into the basket. She did this as if she were ripping a piece of paper in half, not as if she were separating muscle from muscle. She moved the basket into the sink.

Rosalie pointed at the basket, then at me, then at her mouth making chewing motions. I nodded, hoping that she meant that for later and not now.

I guess she did mean it for later, because she disappeared out the front door, this time closing it behind her. And then I heard few loud sounds of respiration — she must have been holding her breath the whole time inside the cabin ... and not because of the soup smell, _but because of my blood, I bet!_ — which was followed by a stream of rather unpleasant verbiage. It was quiet; I don't think it was meant for my ears, but after the monastic silence in the cabin, her quiet voice was almost deafening: melodious and ringing. And angry. Something to the effect of "I'm _never_ going to wash this stench off of me! _Never!"_ I felt rather small for being so weak and helpless that I put her through something so obviously odious to her.

She then marched back in, closing the door with her shoulder, and walked up to the stove. She rested her cupped hands on the stove top for a minute. I winced and looked away. Then I jumped in my seat: she was right in front of me, cupped hands pressing against my lower lip.

I was afraid to look at the damage done to her hands. Were vampires lepers? It looked like she felt absolutely nothing as she cooked her own hands on the stove. Then all my thoughts were obliterated: cool liquid slid down my throat.

_Ah! Water!_

When you're thirsty, there is nothing in the world that tastes like water does ... sweet and life-giving. And this cool water seemed to reanimate every cell in my parched being. I almost whimpered in relief. I finished it off. She walked out again, coming right back in nearly the same instant. She didn't even ask, verbally or not, whether I wanted more. I saw that she had snow in her cupped hands as she placed them on the stove. I watched the snow melt in her hands. I watched her hands ... they didn't melt.

She came over to me, and I drank the water down again as quickly as I could. I looked at her with pleading eyes. "Mohrh?" she asked. I nodded. Out she went again. I had two more "cups". After the fourth "cup" of water, I pointed at the door, dropping my eyes and blushing again. I saw as I peeked at her that she nodded. She took my hand as we walked to the door. She opened it, and I looked outside dubiously. She had on those nice leather boots. I had on woolen socks. While I was wondering what to do, I found myself instantly cradled in her arms, flying across the forest floor.

I remembered that I had forgotten to check the little mirror by the sink when she put the basket of meat there. Well, here was the perfect time for the other check. As casually as I could, I rested my head against her chest. That wasn't unnatural, was it? I listened intently.

No sounds of breathing.

No heartbeat.

I pressed my head as hard as I could against her chest where her heart should be.

No sound of heartbeat. No moving internal pump that should have been moving blood throughout her cold, hard, and perfect body.

I dared to look up to her face, but I guess we had arrived, as I found myself in motion, dropping from her grasp into a standing position beside a small shed with a crescent moon on it door. The outhouse. The pail of embers sat adjacent to the building next to a pail of water. She opened the door. It was dark inside, of course, but it was definitely more than your one-seater crapper. It had two seats separated by a fold-up flap urinal.

The previous owners, besides being a bit on the well-to-do side, also had a sense of humor. The urinal had been stenciled: "Pee in here" and the seats had stenciling behind them: "Poop here." I lifted one of the seats. It had a cloth cover. Wow! They went all out. I looked closer. The cloth was flannel. Red and black flannel. It looked like it was new.

Just then Rosalie opened the door and walked in with the pail of water, she then reached outside and grabbed the pail of embers, closed the door, plunging us in near darkness, and poured the embers into the water pail. Steam hissed ferociously, filling the room, and then heating it.

That's Rosalie: the outhouse's central heating expert. Well, that was actually pretty considerate of her.

There seemed to be at least one ember left in the ember pail, because she took it out and touched it to the wall. Light brightened the outhouse as the candle I had not seen before flared to life.

"Thanks!" I said before I remembered 'no talking' rule, and then I cringed, waiting for her to bite my head off. But she just nodded. I guess the rule really was 'no talking if you're expecting a verbal response' rule.

"Ummm, well." I said. I set my rag on the urinal flap and pulled up my sweater, bending to sit down. Rosalie's hands grabbed my wrists, and she lowered me carefully onto the seat. I guessed her motive: sitting on a flannel toilet seat could be slippery work. When I was fully seated, I moved to extract my arms, but she wouldn't let my wrists go.

I tried to reassure her: "It's okay. I'm not going to fall in; I can support my own weight, you know."

But she wasn't buying it. She shook her head _no_ and gasped "hrypertermiah."

Oh, yeah. I suppose hypothermia could sap the strength out of your body. Also the fact that the extent of my activity today included crawling to the door and sitting at the table eating biscuits and being "spoon"-fed soup and water. I guess I didn't have much to judge if I could support myself.

"Well, at least, could you please look away?" I pleaded. I have no memory of anyone helping me go, on top of which this was a rather sensitive time for me anyway, and I was extremely embarrassed already.

She didn't even roll her eyes; she just looked away. I breathed out a sigh of relief, "Thanks."

After a while, where I did actually follow the instructions behind me, I finished and said, "Um, okay, I'm done." Rosalie transferred my left hand to my right, encircling them both in her left, and with her right she brought the water pail in front of my hands.

"Tooh haat?" she asked again. I looked at her quizzically. I wasn't supposed to drink ember-filled water, was I? Then she dunked her hand into the pail, and motioned with her eyes to my hands and to the water.

Oh! She wanted me to wash my hands. I put a tentative finger into the water. It wasn't hot, it was just warm, so I put both hands in, "Nah, it's great; it's just warm."

She shook her head at me. Huh? She then wrapped her left hand around my back and under my arms, leaning me back, and then, with her right hand picked up the pail and then poured a bit just below my stomach between my legs.

I had never had this done to me before. This must be a big city East Coast thing. It felt good, like taking a bath, but I couldn't look anywhere. My eyes shifted from place to place, not being able to rest on anything even for a second. _Fancy that, a Montana girl being ashamed of getting washed._ Well, yeah! You've got a problem with that? I knew that emotions were running rather high if I could get angry at my own internal monologue.

She moved the pail away and then leaned me forward.

And kept leaning me forward. My head was almost between my knees, when I felt water on my backside and yelped in shock of that. _Then_ wet paper rubbed me back there. _Then _more water. I was too far gone to know how to react now. Way, way, way too far gone.

She stood me up. _Can this be over now, please?_ Not quite: she had a soft-looking white cloth in her hand. She made rubbing motions with it in front of the crotch of her pants and then her backside and handed it to me. I toweled off the remaining water. There was a couple of red dots on the cloth now, so I put it on the urinal beside my old rag. I didn't think she would want me to use it again later. I didn't know the exact extent of her sensitivity to my blood, but it appeared she was _very _sensitive. Maybe a few dots were too much? I wasn't going to risk guessing wrong.

Rosalie reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a pair of cotton panties, from another pocket came a pad. I hadn't seen her pack these items for me, but somehow she had, because she had known I would need them, even though she, apparently, did not. Well, not the pad, at least. I wondered when her last period was. I was betting vampires didn't release their own blood voluntarily. I wondered if she remembered what having a period felt like. And for all this, she still remembered to get me those things. I looked at her, awestruck. _She was taking care of me._

Unbidden, tears began to spill out of my eyes. Rosalie seemed impatient, however, tsking and shaking the articles in front of me, so I took them, putting them on. As I was doing so, bent over, putting on the panties one leg at a time, pad in place, I whispered very clearly: "Thank you. You are being so kind to me."

I stood again and regarded Rosalie. She appraised me for a moment, dispassionately, then nodded. She picked up my old rag and the white cloth, and tied them together in a series of knots that made them look rather like a rope ball. There was a large bucket in the corner of the outhouse; it looked like a 55-gallon drum. She opened the lid and scooped out a white, fine powder. It smelled sweet and sour: _lime_. She opened the seat where I was sitting and poured in the powder. The smell of sweetness filled the enclosed area. It had nothing on her scent: in her proximity to me I could detect just the slightest _taste_ of honeysuckle and rose again. It made the lime smell sharp and bitter by comparison.

She then extinguished the candle with her fingers. She opened the door and picked me up with her right arm. Her scent became strong now. It smelled like _home:_ not like the house where I had just come from a day — _two days? three days?_ — ago, the Swan residence, but like _going_ home or _coming_ home or _being_ home — safe, happy, at peace. Her scent had that kind of lulling affect on me, enveloping and comforting me.

She stepped outside, and with her left arm, she casually flicked the rope ball perpendicular to the path we had taken. The ball flew up, up, up into the sky and then disappeared beyond the tree tops. She stood still, listening. Seconds later, I heard a nothing sound of "plop" in the distance, and I imagined the rope ball hitting water. I wondered if that water was the Belle Fourche she had mentioned before that I had fallen into; I was desperate for some way to get my bearings. I wasn't a local geography expert, however, I had never heard of the Belle Fourche before. We were most likely very far from Ekalaka.

Satisfied that my recently dirtied "cloths" were properly disposed, Rosalie shifted me to the cradle position between her arms, and we sped off. I had a couple of seconds before we got back to the cabin, so I said it.

"You're being so kind ... for a vampire."

The world spun so fast that I didn't know up from down anymore, and I felt myself slam into something. _Crunch!_ Oh! That was me hitting the snow. I rolled over twice before coming to a stop face down in it. Shocked from the cold and disoriented from the spinning I quickly lifted my head and looked around.

I wish I hadn't.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes: **

Both Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ and J. Sheridan LeFanu's _Carmilla_ are in the public domain. You can obtain a copy to read from, e.g., the website Project Gutenberg.


	15. Tree Hugger

**Chapter summary:** Me? Hug trees? I'd rather be waltzing at a cotillion than be caught dead — ha-ha — by a forest cabin. What next? Wear flannel and grow my hair long? Oops, doing that, too. Sigh! Trot out the painted baby seals ... mmm, seal: yummy!

* * *

I swung my head around, looking to see what happened, looking for Rosalie, and I missed her on the first pass, but then her scream alerted me to her presence. It was just like the one she wailed in the cabin.

But it was much shorter, and sounded like it was cut off, as if she was being choked, or, most likely, had run out of air in her lungs.

She stood about fifteen feet away from me, ramrod straight, arms pressed stiffly against her sides, her hands clenched into tight fists. Her head was thrown back in a scream that now made no sound. She stood there, like that, for five, then ten, more seconds. As each second passed, I became more scared. Rosalie, in her silent scream, was more terrifying than as she was as a banshee.

I was partially lying down in the snow still, my hands pressed into it lifting my upper body and head from the white blanket in my search for my resident vampire. My hands and legs were starting to freeze, but now was not the time to call attention to myself. Maybe she'd run away again?

No such luck. Her head snapped back down to her usual chin-held-high position, and her eyes fixed on mine. They weren't black, but they were cold, determined, and furious. They seemed to harpoon me, fixing me to the ground. Her face hardened into set lines, and, if anything, turned whiter. The standoff lasted a second that stretched on for ever, and then she seemed to come to a decision. Her jaw clenched.

It looks like I had crossed some uncrossable line.

She lifted up her left foot and planted it into the ground in front of her. This is the first time I had ever seen her break the snow's surface when she walked, and the ground actually trembled as she advanced as the snow exploded away from her penetrating foot. Her right foot lifted and planted itself through the snow onto the ground, which shook again. I could feel her eyes on mine as she closed the distance purposefully, but I couldn't look into those terrifying orbs. I only saw her powerful stride and the snow parting like water as she advanced. And then I realized what she was going to do.

She was going to kick me. She was going to kick me to death.

I rolled up into a ball, my hands and arms over my head and my face down in the snow. If I couldn't see the blows landing, I reasoned, maybe it wouldn't hurt so much. I felt her third stride through the snow as the ground took the blow of her foot. As I would be taking that blow. The next stride her right foot planted right by my face, and I shook along with the ground. I readied myself for the hammer blow, trying to be brave.

I could almost feel as her left foot came up over me ... I couldn't suppress the tightening of all my muscles in anticipation of the blow. I tried, I really tried, not to whimper in fear ... and it came down hard.

A few feet beyond me.

Did I dare look up? Maybe not just yet. The next step thundered a few feet beyond the last one. Then the next one, and then the next one. And then silence.

I peeked. About thirty feet away, Rosalie seemed to be holding on for dear life to a pine tree with a trunk about as twice as wide as she was. I watched her in fascination. What was she doing? And, as I watched, I saw her hands sink into the sides of the trunk. Then, her arms began to sink into the tree, too. Was she merging with the tree? Had my guess been completely wrong about her being a vampire? Was she some kind of dryad instead? Was that why she was angry, that I had insulted her by calling one thing when she was another?

Did dryads drink blood?

As I was watching and pondering, I heard a deep and low groan come from Rosalie. Wait, I thought she was out of air in her lungs ... how could she groan like that without air? Then another groan came. It didn't come from her, I realized; it came from around her: from the ground and from the forest itself. And, as I understood this I saw Rosalie and the tree begin to sway from side to side in a slow dance of death.

So, maybe not a dryad, but a vampire that took the essence from trees, too? Was there such a thing as vampires eating plants? Was she like some kind of vegetarian vampire?

_Crack!_

A sound like thunder from lightning striking right next to me, like from lightning striking the tree Rosalie held, almost knocked me over in its intensity. The swaying dance between Rosalie and the tree suddenly became jerky. I sat up and scootched back a bit, clasping my arms around my knees.

_Crack! Crack!_

The reports were like gun shots, but I now saw what was causing them: the roots around the base of the tree in Rosalie's embrace were snapping. Rosalie was uprooting the massive pine right in front of my eyes. Snow fell in clumps around the tree as it was loosed by the struggle.

Then Rosalie bent her knees and _lifted._ The tree gave one final tremendous groan and was held, suspended in the air in Rosalie's arms. Its tap root snapped free with a sound like the end of the world.

She had staggered before, in the cabin, when I had had the first cramps of my period, but now, with this massive prize in her arms, reaching nearly to heaven, she merely turned. The tree now faced me.

I looked the tree up and down. Why kick me to death when she would need to take care of hiding the body later? The tree facing me had a different answer. _Two birds with one stone._ I would die _and _be buried out of sight from anyone who cared to look just as soon as she let go. I couldn't see her, but I could tell she was moving, because the tree seemed to walk toward me. It stopped about ten feet away from where I sat.

Then she let the tree go.

I didn't look away this time. It was going to be quick, but I wanted to see every glorious second of it. How many people in the world can claim they died by being flattened by falling trees? Not many: maybe a few loggers. But how many of them got to watch it all happen as it was handed to them by the world's most beautiful — and terrifying — woman? Me, that's who.

I had front row seats to the greatest final show on Earth.

_Timber. _The tree came down with a crash. I watched as it fell ... three feet from where I sat in the snow. From just a bit further than ten feet away, Rosalie glared at me with eyes narrowed to slits.

I really needed to talk with her afterward about her working on her aim.


	16. Ignorant Assumptions

**Chapter summary: **I didn't know I could court death so many times in one day. Well, this would be the second day for that dance. I didn't know an indestructible vampire would hurt so much. And I didn't know I would be the cause of it. Again, and again.

* * *

Rosalie marched toward me more quickly this time — but this time I noted she was back to walking on top of the snow, and not shaking the forest plowing through the snow, _thank God!_ — and alighted on the tree near its base. She then reached down and into the tree and pulled up. About four feet of thick and scaly bark came off the trunk in Rosalie's hands, and she tossed it aside. The bark hit another pine, which shook on the impact, causing more snow to dislodge around us. Rosalie flicked the snow off her shoulders, then knelt on the trunk and pushed down gently with her palms.

_'Gently_' seemed to be a relative term. The tree buckled under the pressure, and went concave under her steady push. She dismounted and came to me.

_Well,_ I reasoned, _I hadn't died yet, so there's no need to flinch now._

She scooped me up — I was rather proud that I didn't, after all, flinch — and placed my backside on the trunk. It was about as cold as the snowy ground. Which was warmer than her hands. I didn't see any positive results of me complaining about a comfort issue, so I kept my mouth shut. She swung my feet up on to the branch, and then pointed at me and then the trunk. She then opened her palm, facing it toward me in a stopping motion.

_Sit, Fido; stay!_ Great. Well, the _play dead _command hadn't come, still. So there was that. I nodded my head, obediently. A blur: she was gone.

So, what now?

"What is your problem, girl?" Her voice, clear, bell-like, and sounding as if from some distance, rang through the forest. "All I asked of you is one simple thing: no talking!"

Ah! So it was to be the lecture, then. Well, okay: no talking. I guessed if I played along like she wanted me to — as a _nice girl_ — I'd get back to the warm cabin sooner rather than later. I bit my lip to stifle any hint of a retort.

"Apparently that was too hard for you to understand?" She was just raring to go, wasn't she? "What? Did you think your 'please's and 'thank you's would soften me up? Did you think you could take advantage of my self-imposed silence? Did you think it gave you permission to parade your ignorant assumptions in front of me?"

_"Ignorant assumptions!"_ I roared, incensed, before I realized I had drawn breath.

Yup, that's me, sticking with the game plan of getting inside that toasty-warm cabin sometime this year. Did I mention I really, really, hated the cold? Apparently not enough. I should have bitten my tongue off while I had the chance.

She roared right back. "Ignorant, yes! and assumptions, yes! And insulting, too, let's not forget!" How come she gets to sound so terrifying, yet her voice gets to sound like angelic choirs? I was cold; I realized my excursion to the outhouse, where Rosalie had in fact done everything for me, left me weakened, and I was tired. Did I mention I was a bit on edge?

"Oh, so you're not a vampire?" Getting back into the cabin. Right. Why couldn't I have just said, "Yes, mother." and be done with it? Oh, no: not Bella-the-Swan!

"You're so sure that's what I am, a vampire? You're positive?" she shot right back.

_"YES!"_ Well, no, actually: not everything added up, but I wasn't going to back down from my epiphany or be tricked or confused out of it. I had uncovered her now obvious secret, and she would just have to live with that ... or not exactly _live_ with that, being that she was undead and all.

"Oh, so you could use a cross to ward me off, then, right?"

Before I could answer, she was right in front of me. I added that to my list: the list of "Things that Rosalie does that irritates the hell out of me." Rosalie appearing and disappearing at will: that would be something like number twelve on the list. I had already catalogued something like twenty items. Although "saving my life", "getting me pads" and "making and then hand-feeding me soup" were not on that list, I reflected ruefully. Why couldn't she be just evil? Why did she have to do nice things or surprising things all the time and mess with my desire simply to hate her?

She pulled me off the trunk and set me — gently, dammit! _Hate her! Hate her! Hate her! _— on the ground. She then jumped up on the tree and then began carving the trunk with her finger. I looked on. She was carving a cross, right into the trunk. She then used both hands and made scooping motions along her outline. Her last motion lifted the cross out of the tree: it was about one foot across by two feet in height. I noted the top of the cross was a bit wider. She held it out to me with a triumphant smile wreathing her face. There were letters carved into the cross at the top: "I.N.R.I." She didn't seem to have any trouble holding the cross she fashioned. She handed it over to me — I had to hold it with both hands to keep it upright ... _she didn't, _she only used one hand (number 21 on the list) — and said through gritted teeth: "Say _'vade retro Satana'"_

"What?" She _couldn't_ be serious.

She nodded her head. She was.

"Umm, va-day retro satana?" I felt utterly foolish.

She walked toward me, dripping menace. I stumbled back a bit, almost falling, but then her ice-cold hands caught mine. When she brought me back to a standing position, the cross came to rest against her chest. She held my hands against the cross which was against her chest for several seconds.

I became aware of our proximity as her scent began to intoxicate me again. So, I was scared out of my mind, angry, tired, and filled with scented honeysuckle-rose well-being. In short, a confused muddle.

Hey, maybe that's how vampires hypnotized their victims: the scent?

She was looking into my eyes intently and with a smug superiority. She looked down at the cross pressed to her chest and shrugged.

_Yeah, yeah, Bella-the-dummy._ I was _so_ looking forward to the "I told you so" lecture that was sure to come.

She took the cross from my hands and with one easy and swift motion buried about three inches of its base into the fallen tree. She then lifted me back to my seat. My two foot wide, hundred feet high, seat. I noticed Rosalie had embedded the cross in my plain view. _Nice. Thanks for that. _She then blurred away, and the forest rang out again with her voice.

"Don't you dare box me into you convenient little definitions of the world!" Ah, yes: the 'I told you so' lecture. "Do you think that's all I am, a vampire?" _She's more than that?_ "And what about you! Do you like me boxing into being just a nameless girl?"

_"NO, I DON'T!"_ I screamed. That was right up there around number 1 on the list, in fact.

"Well, then, earn it! Earn your name!"

_"HOW!"_ I wish I could make the forest ring like Rosalie did when she spoke. She didn't even need to shout to do it either. My shoutings, however how much I tried to make them ring, were dull and flat. That would be number 4: her voice verses my voice.

"First by doing what your told to do! Which means, second, thinking rightly more and speaking wrongly less!"

"What? How am I supposed to do that? How do I know I'm saying something ignorant, as you say, if I don't know that I'm saying something, um," _oh, shoot!_ "ignorant!" Well, that didn't end as well as I wanted it to. Cold: freezing brain ... not good.

"That's easy!" _Easy for you!_ "What did you say?"

"I called you a vampire!"

"No, you didn't!"

"Yes, I did!" This whole shouting across the forest thing was getting old.

"No, you said that I was _kind_ for a vampire! Do you know what the kindness of vampires is?" So, she has vampire friends? It was so easy to get lost and confused by the turning and twisting of her words, but she didn't wait for an answer.

"The kindness of vampires is a swift death! Have you received that kindness? _Have I? NO!"_

"And what about being a vampire or being a human or being an elephant, even, constrains kindness? Have you thought about that, girl?" I was back to being called _girl_ I observed, although, come to think of it, I didn't recall a vacation happening anywhere in this conversation. "When I fed you and when I helped you in the outhouse, did it matter if I was a vampire or if I was human or if I was Kaiser Wilhelm? Kindness is kindness! And you got it all wrong anyway! The one in the outhouse who was kind was _you, _girl, not me! When you said that I was kind and you cried in gratitude, it was out of the kindness of your heart! Didn't you see that? I did! and something stirred in this cold, dead shell of mine that I didn't think that could: _I hoped!_"

Suddenly my snide and sarcastic internal monologue became very still and quiet.

"I didn't want to dare to hope. I was almost afraid to want to hope. Imagine that, me, Rosalie Lillian Hale, afraid! _A Hale may fear, but a Hale perseveres!_ So I took that baby step forward, toward hoping that you would give me something to hope for. But then you took it all away, didn't you? _Kind for a vampire!_ If I knew that wasn't in your nature, I would have accused you of toying cruelly with me, giving me just a taste of hope and then crushing it as I reached out for it."

My superiority at figuring everything out dried up and blew away. I felt very small. Very small, indeed: "I'm ..." I tried to get something past my constricted throat, but my voice didn't work past a whisper which I knew she couldn't possibly hear. I cleared my throat as discreetly as I could, but she had already moved on.

"Why didn't you destroy me in the outhouse? That would have been more merciful, you know! Or were you trying to destroy me with your words as we were returning from there? You nearly succeeded! Did you assume that I would be happy that you figured everything laid out so obviously in front of you? Did you think I would be pleased by your acumen? Do you think I delight in this cursed existence of _eternal want?_ That I would delight in you proudly parading that in front of me? _'Oh, look at Rosalie, the vampire!'_"

I wrapped myself in myself, arms encircling knees again. I was cold and tired. But that didn't matter anymore, because I was stupid, stupid, stupid, and I had kicked my vampire kidnapper in the face as she reached up to me from the fiery pits of Hell for help. This morning I had wished I could have died from embarrassment, but my embarrassment then was only because of the nakedness of my flesh. Now I was looking at the nakedness of my soul, and I didn't like the small, mean, disgusting rat that I saw.

"Do you know what's funny, though?" And she laughed. It was a laugh filled with sadness. "We are entirely opposite. You give and give and give and never think of yourself. You give yourself completely to your Pa and to your horse and to Edward. _You even made me biscuits! _And do you know why? You are entirely selfless. And you don't even know it! Me, I've always known who I am and what I wanted. And do you know what I always wanted, since I was eleven years old? Do you know what they called me in finishing school, behind my back, even the teachers? They called me the Ice Queen! I knew that, and I had the means to call them out, but I didn't. Do you know why I didn't? _I WAS PROUD OF THAT TITLE!_ I fit that title! As a human, I did everything I could to be cold and hard and beautiful. I _wanted_ to be _THIS! _And I got what I deserved! Am I not _BEAUTIFUL_?"

Maybe I could start making amends, starting right now. I bore down hard and pulled myself together, shouting with feeling: "You are the most beautiful person in the world!" because I believed it. Because it was the truth.

"_What! Are you blind? Open your eyes! I'm not beautiful, and I'm not a person! I AM A MONSTER!"_ God! I couldn't do anything right! I couldn't even attempt to console Rosalie without screwing up. I buried my head between my knees, but that didn't stop the sound of her voice penetrating the forest and my heart.

"I've always known what I wanted, and now that I'm cursed with this existence, I want nothing more than to be you! Well, not you, I know I don't deserve to be you: you do. Your body cannot even contain the great soul of yours: I see it spilling out of your kind, caring eyes all the time! But I want to have your nature again ... just even for one year ... just even for one hour. I would take that and die a happy death! Look at you, so alive! Your skin, so beautifully creamy white and smooth. I can't hold it without the risk of crushing you, but I have never felt anything so soft and warm. O! to be human again and to have soft skin to be caressed! Is my skin soft? I don't have skin! I just have this outer impenetrable marble shell! O! to be human again and to feel warmth coming from inside me! Do I have warmth inside me? No! The snow that so chills you to the bone is a velvet blanket to me. _I cool the snow!_ And your heartbeat; o! your glorious, wonderful, enchanting, vibrant heartbeat! O! to be human again and to feel a heart pumping life through my veins! Do you know the only time I feel life in my veins, girl? It's when my teeth are attached to your neck! The only life in my veins is the life I suck away from others! Do I want to do that? _YES!_ There is nothing that is more ecstatic than to feel the vitality of another being draining from them into me. There is no drug more satisfying. There is no elixir more desirable. But what does that make me? I'll tell you what that makes me, because you don't have room in your kind heart to speak the truth! It makes me _a monster! You said I was the most beautiful person in the world, but I am pure evil, through and through! _You give, but I am Death: all I do is consume; I take and I take and I take and it is never enough! And you, innocence personified, remind me of that with your every necessary breath, your every sigh in your sleep, your every blush."

"_O! your blush!_ Do you know what your blush means?"

I didn't, but I was pretty sure I was going to find out. And I was pretty sure, that in finding out that I was going to hate myself more for hurting her.

"O! your beautiful, perfect blush, girl! You probably don't know this, being here in the hinterlands, but in society, the blush was an open sexual invitation."

Hate myself, and be so much further embarrassed. I couldn't believe the heat on my cheeks. I had entered my own personal Hell.

"That where the term 'blushing bride' came from, did you know that? Because she could only blush for her spouse in the wedding chamber! A girl in society could not blush to any man at all, she had to paint her face to be pale. And, boy, did I ever attack my face with the trowel! Not too much, of course, just enough to bring out and enhance the natural beauty. Natural beauty!" She spat these last words out.

"And I was appropriately painted that night ... you know the date: April 3rd, 1933 — the day I died. O! I was modest and appropriate and _blush free!_ But did that stop my fiancé, that sadistic murdering rapist? You know his name, too: _Royce King the Second." _She hissed out his name like a rattler stepped on by a horse's hoof.

My world suddenly turned upside down. I remembered words I had said to her in another forest in another age, and began to taste the bitter rusty flavor of regret as she now sang the song of her own doom that I had so callously miscalled to her face.

"He really didn't even qualify for any of those things. If he had been alone or if I had been properly escorted — _like I should have been if I hadn't been stuffed so full of my pride and self-absorption! _— nothing would have happened because he didn't have enough courage to fill a thimble. But that night, he had his four _buddies _with him and was filled with his courage, his single malt scotch. I'm shocked that he could even get his limp little prick up to do the deed, he was that drunk! After he took his half-turn, he passed me off to his friends for their turns, and they all left me in that gently falling soft snow, bleeding out and dying. Blushing bride? No, that wasn't an option for me. Not after that. Not for eternity!"

I'll never be able to look at myself again! I remember how I had told her that she faked her death to avoid her wedding to Royce, and I wished somehow I could eat my words, even as they now knifed me, slashing my worth to ribbons.

"O! to be human again and to blush once, bride or no, just one single time! Can I blush, girl? No, marble doesn't blush. Marble doesn't change. Marble doesn't live. Just to be alive again! Just to feel the change of time, instead of float above it in this accursed eternity. To be a woman again! O! Just to have your menstruation!"

I muttered under my breath, "You can take it."

There was silence. Rosalie had stopped her rant. I looked up. She was standing right in front of me, with her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

Oh, God! She had heard me, or she had read my mind, or something. I had done it again. I had so casually hurt her. And so soon on the heels of knowing how badly my last ignorant pronouncement had struck her to the core. I buried my head back between my legs and shut my eyes tightly. I couldn't take the shame any more. Please, just kill me. Please, just kill me. Please, just kill me.

"Please."

I didn't realize I had spoken out loud. But the voice was wrong, it wasn't mine, and it had come from beside me. Rosalie had just said _'please'._ _Why?_ My head snapped up quickly, and I found myself looking into the saddest eyes in the world. I started to move my head back to its hiding place, but her hand flashed out too quickly and caught my chin. She looked right into me, and my soul lay bare before her and she enunciated each syllable as if the sounds were somehow essential:

"Please don't say that, yes?"

Tears rolled over my eyelids. I nodded mutely; contrite. She looked at me for a second and then flashed away before I even realized her hand was gone.

"To be alive, girl," she continued, somewhat more evenly, but as if we hadn't had that moment, "even to feel the pain you feel now. But I'm not alive now. Oh, no! Because who happened along that alley that night as I lay dying? The good Dr. Cullen, hunting for a beautiful little girl to mate to his beloved Edward. He found and turned me, and for what? The first thing that smug little princeling did when he saw me was to scoff in disdain: _'What were you thinking, Carlisle? Rosalie Hale?'_ But I could take that, because the second thing I would do, after I took a life to satiate my thirst, would be to rip his superior little face right off. But what I couldn't take was Esme. Do you know what the worst thing you can do to me?"

Besides the three blows I had hammered on her? Well, then, no, I didn't, but I figured I knew who did, although I couldn't imagine Esme, who looked like kindness herself, could be connected to any crime Rosalie was heaping on herself and the world.

"The worst thing you can do to me is to pity me. _A Hale is not to be pitied!_ We take our drubbings with the rest of them, but we always overcome! But not for me on my death day: I had the world at my feet that morning, and that night I was begging for Carlisle or Edward or Esme to kill me, because I didn't want to go on. Not like this: tainted ... damaged goods. Not forever. I couldn't bear it. But then Esme _pitied me in my misery!_ And so I _knew_ there was no more overcoming for me: I would always be this way, trapped in eternity as a beautiful, cold, tainted monster; I would always be Esme's object of pity. And I couldn't even tear her face off to improve my lot because she pitied what I was. It would not alter me one bit, so the only recourse was for me to take that kind, caring, passionate pity of hers. _HOW I HATED HER!_"

I was glad she wasn't poking the hot irons of her words at me, but it hurt for her to be attacking the others, who I didn't know as well as her, but seemed to see in them things differently than what she said.

"Kindness and hope, girl. The Cullens weren't kind, but from them, too, I had a glimmer of hope. I was all alone: Carlisle and Esme had each other, boy! did they have each other, those two little love birds cooed day and night with their lovey-dovey talk. _Gah!_ Edward seemed to be self-sufficient, that is, until he fell over himself to be with you. Foolish of him, but I understand better now what the draw was, with your sweetness and sweet scent. And my eyes were just turning from the blood red that they were when I was newly created to the golden hues of a mature vampire. And I had vindicated myself in Rochester. Smooth sailing in a new part of the world, right? I could live with them: I would be alone, yes, because they didn't really love me, but they accepted me as a companion."

She paused. I knew what was coming now. The dread filled me as I waited for me to appear in her story.

"But then along came Little Miss Detective, alight with curiosity and motivated to get to the bottom of this mystery. You couldn't resist, could you? You couldn't sit still until you curiosity was satisfied, could you? Well, you know what they say about curiosity!"

Yes, I did know. Just call me "Bella-the-Cat". According to Rosalie, I had already expended three lives. I wonder if the tree I was sitting on that had fallen so close to me counted as another life?

"What was your motivation? Because I really wish to know! Everyone in my life and in my existence has conspired to bring me low, to extinguish any hope I had. You succeeded doing that better than anyone before and only just now! — _Kind for a vampire, _indeed — and only from that sweetness and innocence of your heart! Are you some trial to test me? Are you some demon to torture me?"

I no longer cared about the cold, but the cold cared about me. She had utterly defeated me. It was funny, she was telling me how terrible she was, and all I could think about was how terrible I was being to her. I started to shake uncontrollably. I tried not to allow my teeth to chatter, she would probably add that to her list of lamentations.

"Rosalie, I'm sorry! I'm really, really sorry!" I shouted with feeling, hoping, somehow, to break through her spiral of remorse.

"Oh! She says she's sorry! How nice! Well, I need neither your contrition nor your pity, thank you so very much!" I couldn't even apologize without infuriating her.

_"Well, what do you need from me? Just tell me, and I'll do it! P-p-please!"_ Staring at the cross the indestructible but vulnerable vampire had planted in front of me, I felt the despair eat away at the edges of my soul.

"Why don't you start by focusing your sharp intuition on yourself for a change? Maybe your natural curiosity has always been focused elsewhere because you're afraid of what you'll see in the mirror? _Know thyself,_ girl. That will be a most excellent start. And then we can hope to be able to start a discussion from somewhere. How about that?"

I could do that. I had never done that before, but this request of hers was something that I could do. I was about to agree, but a blur caught me up and raced me into the cabin in seconds. It was noticeably cooler, and I looked to Rosalie, but she was already gone. I was now shivering uncontrollably, and I wouldn't make it through a cold night.

"R-r-r-r-osal-l-l-lie!" I screamed. _Please don't be gone for two hours or more!_

Nothing. I was doomed. I started to head toward to bed, shakily, when a blur materialized right in front of me. Rosalie lifted her eyebrow.

"D-d-d-did you f-f-forget the wood f-f-or th-th-the-the f-f-f-fire?" She could see me shaking. I couldn't fight it or hide it, but, instead of reacting to that, she stood in front of me in utter stillness and then, after a second, smiled sadly, and through clenched teeth said:

"O! to be human again, and forget anything at all! Just once."

Her statement slammed into me harder than a maul. I collapsed to the floor and wailed. The blanket from the bed appeared around me, and I was in her arms. I couldn't stop sobbing. She held me in her arms and rocked me, as a mother would rock a newborn babe, and I buried my head into her chest, let her scent wash through me, and cried and cried and cried.

After a long while, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and I could look up, although sobs still shook my whole being. She traced one finger from her eye down her cheek, then put it to her lips. _Don't cry, baby. Shhh._

This, of course, brought on a fresh round of tears, and I nearly descended into hysteria. The irony did not escape me. I had just insulted her, again, for the fourth time today, yet she, my vampire kidnapper, was the one who was comforting me. She laid me gently on the bed, resting her hand on my shoulder. I grabbed her wrist with both my hands in desperation: "D-d-d-don't g-g-g-o, _please!" _I kept my eyes shut tightly because I already knew her answer.

"C-c-" then nothing. She had run out of air. In defeat, I opened my eyes wearily, waiting for the bad news. She extracted her hand. I let it go, and watched it leave my side. It killed me as she withdrew it.

She surrounded herself in her arms, and then she shook herself violently. Then she pointed at me. I nodded. She pointed at the stove and then out the front door. I shut my eyes and nodded. I didn't want to watch her leave, even if she left in a blur. I felt the breeze.

"W-w-w-well ... g-g-g-good-d-db-b-bye-ye-ye-ye."

Of course, now was the perfect time for my stomach to cramp up in hunger.

Stay in bed, or eat? Stay in bed, or eat? Did I have the energy to get up to the table?

Yes, I did. I was shaking with the cold and with emotion, but I was a big girl. I could take care of myself.

I opened my eyes.

Yes, she was gone.

Sorrow struck me again. I wasn't so sure I could get out of bed now. This was so unfair.

_Oh, don't be such a big self-pitying baby! Rosalie doesn't need your pity, and it's not doing you any good! Just stand up and do at least one thing useful today!_

I got up: it was a lot harder, fighting through the emotions, and the hunger cramps and my other cramps, than I thought it would be. It was also a lot easier, too. I mean, really: standing up from bed — it's not like it was an olympic sport, or anything!

I shambled over to the sink, picked up the basket, and placed it on the table. I sat down. The meat was cold, but tender, having been simmering for God knows how long and then having been shredded by my very own guardian vampire.

I wondered if she would grant me three wishes and my very own ball, just like the balls Lizzy had in _Pride and Prejudice_. All those weird and wonderful things Rosalie had said to me and about me came back as I ate. Did she really see me that way? As kind? As selfless? Did she see me as special? Could I be a person who could be special?

I didn't know, but nibbling on the meat helped, and the quiet helped settle my unsteady nerves. I only sniffed occasionally now.

_Crack! crack-crack-crack! CRACK! Crack!_

Distant reports came from outside the house. It didn't surprise me as much as it would have before, because I had see Rosalie uproot a tree today. I was willing to bet that, in her own inimitable way, she was out gathering sticks — _tree-sized sticks_ — for the stove.

Seconds later, Rosalie was by the stove, undampening it and opening up the front doors. She disappeared again, then a pile of logs reaching up to the ceiling appeared just inside and beside the front door.

I say 'logs' so casually: these were limbs torn from the branches and torn or twisted asunder. Some looked like they were sectioned from trunks, sectioned as an orange would be. That is, if the orange were sectioned by a hammer. Saw? Axe? Who needs those things with our 'Coco' Chanel-wearing looks-good-in-lumberjack-outfits Rosalie in the house?

Who, indeed!

She filled the stove, teepee style, but I didn't see how she could start it: just an ember or two glowed a very dull orange. I leaned over and looked, curious.

She looked up at me and frowned.

_Oh, God! What did I do this time?_

She then picked me up and put me in bed, mummifying me in the folds of the blanket. Then she went to the front door, squared herself to the stove, and spit.

Flames roared out of the stove and reached halfway across the cabin toward her.

Oh, my God!

Well, now I was rather glad she moved me from the table. I may not have been burned, but she probably would have had to restart my heart once again. I guess she wasn't going for the record this week.

Flammable spit. That was a new one. I wondered how you'd explain that to a beau. _Oh, yeah, no kissing: I mean it!_

The flames disappeared just about as quickly, and I heard a cackle from with the stove. I'm sure everything caught in that conflagration!

Rosalie wasn't so sure, however. She repeated that process twice more before she was satisfied that the fire in the stove was self-sustaining. By that time, the blessed heat had started to refill the cabin. I looked over to Rosalie. She looked at me and patted her stomach. I shook my head no and put both my hands, folded prayer style, on one side of my head. She nodded and smiled, gesturing open handed over the bed. However, before I stretched out and closed my eyes, I had to make sure.

"Stay! please Rosalie, stay tonight." and I patted the side of the bed where I had made space for her curling around it.

She frowned and pointed to the table then to the front door.

I shook my head. "You can do that tomorrow. Stay tonight, please."

She looked undecided. "Please." I said it as calmly as I could, not trying to beg, just, you know, asking. That's all I was doing: just asking.

She rolled her eyes, shook her head, but moved toward the bed. I couldn't help but break into a large smile as I pulled her seated on the bed into my spooned position.

"Stay." I said, more firmly this time. She nodded.

I closed my eyes. She fussed over the blanket and then rested her hand on my shoulder. My cold hand found her colder one, and I rested it there.

I must have drifted off to sleep pretty quickly: I dreamed an angel in a white robe with golden eyes and long flowing hair bent down and kissed me on my forehead with lips of cut ruby. It cradled my cheek with an alabaster hand and whispered in a clear voice ... a voice that Rosalie didn't have when she was controlling her breathing around me:

"O! to be human again and sleep! Good night, my hope."

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

I had read a story in which Rosalie was called the "Ice Queen" in finishing school, but I don't have the reference any more. Do any of my intrepid readers have the citation, i.e. story name and author? Imaginary cupcakes await.

Edward's quotation is canonical: it's from _Eclipse_, chapter 7, Rosalie's origin story.

_Vade retro, Satana!_ means 'Get thee behind me, Satan!' It wasn't very effective in scaring away vampires in this particular chapter, but you may have better luck elsewhere. Let me know, but _caveat chanter: _YMMV!

_Pride and prejudice _by Jane Austen is in the public domain. It is available, with commentary, from a popular Jane Austen website, or, of course, from the websites such as Project Gutenberg.


	17. Dreams

**Chapter summary: **Dammit! Why did I say anything? I'm a Hale. It's _human._ It _knows!_ It _must die_. This is the _LAW!_ She'd forgive me with her big doe eyes as I killed her, too. I've killed plenty of doe before. Why does it hurt thinking about killing this one?

* * *

I awoke exhausted. _Sheesh!_ Could the dreams be any more vivid? I felt warm, all bundled up in the blanket, that was starting to smell an awful lot like me, which was starting to smell an awful lot like a girl that hadn't bathed properly and who lived in a wood-burning stove house for two days? three days? four days? I was feeling gamey.

Yuck.

I also wasn't feeling cold, and I also wasn't feeling another body sitting next to me in the bed. I hadn't opened my eyes yet, but I started to panic. She said she was going to stay! My hand patted the bed, desperately seeking Rosalie. Nothing.

I drew in a sharp gasp, but then a cold hand covered my now warm one, and I breathed out in relief. _She stayed!_ I opened my eyes, and they were greeted with the most glorious sight they could see: golden hair and eyes, perfect patrician lines, ruby red lips. Rosalie's face.

Yesterday, the exact same vision caused quite a different reaction. Funny what one day can do. Remembering the rest of yesterday's, um, vision, I quickly glanced down and back up to her face ... I hope she didn't notice.

Fortunately for me today, the rest of her _was_ clothed: she had on a white cable knit sweater, under which she wore a burgundy turtleneck.

Red, I guess, is her color. She was always wearing something in it. It should consider itself lucky. I kind of wished I were the color red.

_Okay, now, Bella: stop it._

She was also wearing white denim pants, and the effect was such, with the exception of her hair and the turtleneck, that she would win every single game of hide-n-seek if we were to play it outside. She could probably standing out in the open ten feet from me, and I would walk right past her. She looked like she could blend in perfectly with the snow.

Of course, if I buried myself under three feet of that snow, she would probably still find me if she were a mile away — advantage: vampire. That's what I was, Bella-the-beacon: heartbeat and scent. According to Rosalie, I was a magnet. A vampire magnet.

Maybe I should be thinking of something other than vampire hide-n-seek. I wondered what would happen when you were 'it'. Did 'it' mean 'lunch'?

Um, not thinking of that, right? So, let's start down another path:

"Good morning." I said, trying to sound noncommittal. Had her feelings changed during the night? She looked ... hesitant? withdrawn? Or was that how vampires looked in the morning? Or was I projecting my thoughts or feelings on her? Or fears? I couldn't help but think back over my dreams and shudder.

She nodded.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Silence would be her response on Day two of Bella's period. Another day of imposed silences and one-sided conversations and guessing games. I hoped all this thinking on my part wouldn't cause my head to explode. Pa wasn't much for talking, either, but I had had seventeen years to know his moods, and he was a regular auctioneer, talking a mile a minute, when it came to Miss Statue over there.

Of course, when Pa broke his silences, he didn't have to weigh the risk of talking to me enflaming the desire to drink my blood ...

I grimaced. Thinking of Pa made me think of not being able to see Pa again. Vampire hide-and-seek suddenly seemed like a cheerier thought to entertain. I sighed. New topic.

"So, did I talk in my sleep last night?" I wondered how much she heard, or if I talked about the dreams that I remembered.

She shrugged. Great! It was going to be one of those kinds of conversations, where even yes/no questions got ambiguous answers. It sure was a lot of work — a lot _more_ work than I was used to — pushing through these silences, and, when she wasn't silent, her utterly confusing take on things, and I couldn't measure the results. Did these conversations help me or help her? I had no idea. But I promised I'd try, and I figured a good way to start looking at myself was my dreams. But maybe I was wrong; maybe I should ask her first and see what she would say.

"I had some really vivid dreams last night. Would you like me to tell you them? Is that something you'd be interested to hear about?"

She walked over to the table, got one of the chairs, and set it by the head of the bed and sat down, looking at me interestedly. I guess she wanted to hear them then. I sat up in the bed to tell my stories, and that's when I noticed that I had on PJ bottoms as well as the tee and sweater. I also noticed the pad didn't feel full at all, after however many hours I slept. And the panties felt different than the ones I had on last night, primarily in that they weren't wet from melted snow. Let me tell you: melted snow pressing up against your butt and other sensitive areas ... not comfortable. But thinking of what went on to change all that ... so I checked.

"Did you, um, change me?" I dropped my eyes as I asked this question. I tried not to be embarrassed, and I tried not to blush. That didn't work out so well. Oh! How was I going to get her answer if I wasn't looking at her. I lifted my lowered eyes to see her nod, then averted them again. She changed me. During my period. I did not want to think what she saw as she changed pads, for I could barely look as I took care of my _own_ feminine needs. Taking care of somebody else's? Ewww!

"Um, great; um, thanks." I did have to go eventually. I wondered if she realized this? She said she couldn't forget anything, right? I was also hungry, and I didn't see soup on the stove, and I had already finished off the biscuits. Yesterday's meals weren't all that big and didn't really covered all the activities of the past two? three? days. Yes, I was hungry.

But the dreams were floating there, diaphanous, and I knew they would be gone if I didn't cement them in recollection, and I had a ready audience, too, so ...

"Okay, umm, I'm kind of hungry, but I want to tell you the dreams before I forget them ... I suppose," I added thoughtfully, "if I had a writing pad and some ticonerogas, I could write them down as they occurred ..."

She waved at me to continue. I suppose I'd lobby another time for that.

"They may not be what you'd like to hear ..."

She waved again. I guess I had permission.

"Okay. So my first dream, I was watching you cook like yesterday?" She nodded. "Well you grabbed out a piece of meat from the soup pot, except, it wasn't a piece of meat. It was my right arm. I saw the hand hanging limply, as I reached over with my left arm to feel for my missing arm. It wasn't attached to my shoulder, of course, because you held it: you were sectioning my arm like the meat yesterday? You tore off my hand first and put it in the basket. Then you tore off a piece up toward my elbow, and then you tore the remaining upper arm in half."

She looked at me, her face a complete mask. Just listening.

"The funny thing about that dream: I was completely dispassionate about what was going on. I had this feeling like: 'oh! that's what you needed to do.' Somehow, in my dream, it all made sense."

I looked at her again and continued. "My second dream, we were outside. You know the tree you felled?" She nodded. "Well, I was the fallen tree. I don't know if I was the tree when it was growing in the ground, but I was the fallen tree on the ground, you know?" I paused. She nodded.

"Then you got on top of me, and you tore off my bark, but then I was me again, and you had just torn off my face and all my skin on the front of my body?"

Nothing from her.

"But it didn't hurt. I don't know why, but I just felt a pulling, and I stayed on the ground and didn't move."

"Those were my first two dreams. Do you know what they mean?"

She shrugged, emotionlessly. So I pressed: "Do you want to hear what I think they mean?"

She shrugged again. Well, okay, she didn't say no. "I think my dreams were telling me what's going to happen. That's what you're going to do to me, right? After you kill me? Tear me up into small pieces so nobody'll be able to identify me. You have to do that, you don't really have another option, right?"

She looked away.

"It's okay, you know? If I'm already dead, right? My Pa's in law enforcement, so I know these things. You'll need to pulverize my teeth, too, you know. And burn everything else for good measure, but you have to destroy the teeth. Obviously, the hands, too, but the teeth are what's used to identify people: they last the longest."

She looked back at me, and I looked down: "Unless you want my Pa to know what happened to me, but I think you don't want that, right? No traces, right? That's why I have to die, 'cause I know: I know about you, about what you are. So I guess it's better for Pa never to know anything. So at least he can go on, you know?"

I was trying not to be emotional, but I felt my jaw starting to tighten and my chin ... well, it was hard to keep it still.

"Yeah, I guess it's better that he doesn't know. I guess." My hands were playing with the blanket, drawing lazy circles. It seemed really fascinating for me, what my hands were doing.

I lifted my sweater's arm, my right arm, my arm that was still on me now, and not in the soup pot, and blotted away some water that had somehow appeared on my left cheek.

I took a breath. And sniffled: I had a little bit of congestion.

"My other dream I had, though," I looked up as I continued. Rosalie was a complete cypher, a void, nothing was coming out from her for me to guess what she thought of what I was saying. She did look like a marble statue. The eyes had light in them, however. She was listening.

"I tell you, that one was really different. You were going to give me a drink of water that you would make from snow, right?" I looked; she looked back. "Remember? Oh, sorry! I forgot that you remember everything. I didn't mean to ..."

She did interrupt this time. One cold, hard finger over my lips, her head lifted up in one nod, I guess signaling me to continue, to move along.

"Right." I said after she removed her hand. "Anyway, this time, when you put your hands on the stove, the flesh bubbled away and then charred. This time, unlike in the other dreams, I reacted. I was screaming and crying, and I pulled you off the stove, but some of your flesh stayed on the stove, and it was sizzling, like bacon. You seemed unaffected, however: you were euphoric. It was like you had leprosy, you know: you didn't feel any pain at all. You said, 'Oh, it's okay! Have a drink.' and you offered the blackened water in what was left of your hands. But I couldn't take it; I just couldn't. I felt sick and in pain for your hands and scared. And still you were strangely happy and at peace. 'That's okay, sweetie, but I'm thirsty, and I need to fix my hands. Would you give me a drink?' I was scared; I was so scared: I was scared that you were going to put snow in my hands and then press them on the stove, but you reassured me right away. 'No, just cup your hands, and the water will come, you'll see!' and you grabbed my arms above my wrists with your charred stubs and pulled them together. So, I cupped my hands, even though I was still afraid, so I watched your stubby hands to rest my eyes on something other than my hands as they went to your contented face. And then I felt something funny and wet and warm, and I felt my hands fill with liquid, and you were drinking and drinking and sighing. I saw your hands reform ... they got better and better and then they were as good as new. And I was happy for you, because it hurt me to see you hurting. I was so relieved."

She looked away again as my eyes tried to penetrate the depths of hers.

"But then ... I felt a pulling through my arms, like a rope was being dragged out of them? And I was going to ask you to take your hands off my arms, please, to be gentle, because I was so fragile, but your hands weren't there any more. They were cradling and holding my hands, still bowled, and I saw your head over my wrists. They were cut open and you were drinking and you said, 'Oh! Your blood's so delicious! So sweet! The _aqua vida!_'"

By the time I got to this part, Rosalie's head snapped up, and her eyes shifted from golden to black in a flash, and then she did make a sound.

"Ah!" It was a groan of pain.

And she was gone. I waited for the cold blast to come but none did. Hey, wow, this time she had closed the door ... lucky me!


	18. Next Rest Stop: 1 Mile

**Chapter summary**: You know, you'd really think I'd learn something from the last time I left Rosalie to forge my own way through the snow, right? But when there's no vampire in sight, and a girl's gotta go ... Walking in snow with socks was a problem, though.

* * *

Well, this was just great. I was hungry, but there was nothing on the stove (which was burning hot, I was grateful to notice). I had to, you know, go, but the nearest toilet was a mere fifteen seconds away ... but it was outside, and I didn't have shoes or boots, and those fifteen seconds were in vampire speed. I had managed to scare away the only available vampiric mode of transportation by just talking about my blood. I must be super tasty, I guessed. I had no idea what the distance would actually be to the outhouse. Through snow. In socks.

Like I said: just great.

It was simply impossible to plan around Rosalie's disappearances. She could be gone for hours at a time, like yesterday morning, or she could be within shouting distance and magically appear within seconds.

"Rosalie!" I waited a bit, and then: "ROSALIE?"

Nothing.

Well, I tried the "few seconds" theory. And, from the way she reacted as she left, I could guess she'd be gone a few hours, like she was yesterday morning. I didn't need to go right now, but I didn't think I could wait a few hours, either.

And I was hungry.

And I was thirsty.

One thing at a time, but Rosalie and I were going to have a talk. Or, more accurately, in her current state of silence, _she_ was going to get a _talking to._ It was fine and all if she wanted to do the kidnapping and killing thing, but ...

No, wait. It _wasn't fine_ that she was doing the whole kidnapping and killing thing, _but since she was anyway, _she had some responsibilities she needed to fulfill, and in a much better way than what she was doing right now.

I snickered, realizing what I was doing: I was mentally scolding my vampire kidnapper for slacking off on the job.

Well, if you're going to do something, you may as well do it right.

Like what I had to do now. To use the euphemism, I didn't have a pot to piss in, and I didn't think Rosalie would appreciate the smell, anyway, what with the admixture of blood, and all ... I could wait a while, but then what would happen if I got desperate? I _know _what would happen: I would rush outside wearing whatever I could find, and then I probably wouldn't make it in time to wherever the outhouse was. I looked outside the front door, closing it quickly against the cold. Nope, I couldn't see it from where I was standing, so it would be sure to be a trek to get there. If I waited, I'd probably end up relieving myself somewhere between here and there. I could just see it: me freezing my butt off, my feet numb in the snow, leaving my mark in the forest.

And then what? Well, Rosalie, by her actions, had made it pretty plain I had a scent, so I could just imagine what would happen if she came across _that_ in the forest. Maybe she would lose her tight hold over her already precarious control? But then, there were other issues besides her. My all too recent encounter with a pack of wolves got me thinking that it may not be the best idea in the world to leave my scent in the forest for predators to pick up.

Predators ... wait a minute. Wait just one minute! What else was out there in the woods besides animals? More vampires? More vampires that would smell my flow along with my excrement and say "mmm! tasty human!" just like Rosalie? More vampires that would meet me walking to or from the outhouse?

I had gone my entire life up to now believing that vampires were myth. Within the last month, they had become a reality, the count going from zero to four vampires that I knew. Rosalie's tirade yesterday implied that there were more. Many more? And what she said about Edward, and how I saw her act around me, I gathered vampires in general preferred people to horseflesh. Would they wait long enough for me to explain that I was already 'taken', and they'd have to, like, wait in line? Did vampires have a pecking order or obey queue discipline?

I would have never imagined that a trip to the toilet could be so fraught with peril. Yes, my life was now interesting, but I didn't really think I particularly wanted it interesting in this way.

What to do? What to do? I remembered when I was a little girl, Ma and Pa used to take me to church sometimes. I vaguely remember one sermon the preacher gave; the gist of it was "How then shall we live?" He was saying things about all the bad stuff going on in life, but that we just had to do what was right.

Ma and Pa weren't regular church-goers, and Pa never took me after Ma left. Not that it helped me at all in this current situation. I remember vividly Rosalie's sardonic look as she held my hands against the cross pressed into her. I wondered what her beliefs were. Did she believe in God? Did she have a particular religion? Did she go to church?

It should have been a hilarious thought: Rosalie going to church. I mean, come on, she's a vampire, for goodness sake! But as soon as I pictured it — Rosalie sitting in a pew in a dress like the one she was wearing as she made off with me and with a stern and solemn expression on her face — it didn't seem funny at all. I wondered if she was a regular church-goer with her parents when she was human. Her new family, I guess they were the 'Cullens', did they go to church?

Or did vampires have their own religion? Their own God? There was a famous bank robber by the name of Baby Face Nelson terrorizing Chicago. He would always make a grand exit saying: "Remember, folks: Jesus saves, George Nelson withdraws!" His salutation was, of course, made in jest, but did Jesus offer salvation to the vampires, too? If He didn't, I supposed there wasn't much point to going to church at all, was there? If He did, how did that work with them killing people?

But didn't people kill people? Didn't people kill people a lot more than vampires killed people?

But then, did I bear responsibility for people killing people just because I was also a person? According to Rosalie, she had killed some people, her fiancé being one of them, which was more killings than I had done. In fact, that was more than most people had done. It seemed intrinsic to being a vampire to kill people. After all, weren't people their food source? (Was Rosalie saving me for a snack? Was I a play-toy of hers that she would eat when she got bored of me? The situation didn't feel like either was the case, but she was just so difficult to understand! Her motivations so obscure!) So, if vampires killed _... people_ to eat, were they entirely beyond salvation by their very nature?

_Jeez! _Going from planning a trip to the outhouse to wondering about vampires in church was a stretch I couldn't have ever even imagined I would be making.

Okay. Outhouse foray. I went over to the piles of clothes that I was gifted with yesterday, sat on the floor, and took inventory. Wool socks, panties, pads ... there were three bundles of pads. I stopped and counted the pads in one of the bundles. Thirty pads. There were about one hundred pads in total in the supplies she got me. Was she planning on keeping me around _that_ long?

Wow. This was something to think about.

But not now, as I had more pressing concerns. Back to the inventory: two sweaters, five shirts, lots of tees. Five sets of PJs. Three pairs of denim jeans.

No shoes. No boots. No jacket. No scarves. No gloves. No hats. No hope?

No. She obviously didn't want me going around outside. Unless, that is, she thought I could traipse about like her, in a Chanel dress and bare feet ... or like she did yesterday. I blushed.

Back to the plan. I didn't have normal outside wear — Rosalie didn't leave me any such — but I could improvise with what I did have here. I set aside a pair of panties and a pad to wear after going, then examined the rest. Hm. I could wear three pairs of socks; that should provide some insolation against the cold for my feet. I could wear these PJs and a pair of jeans over that, and then double up on my sweater. The other sweater I could use as a hat and scarf combination, and I'd use a pair of socks for mittens.

Perfect! I felt rather pleased with myself having pulled this plan together: Bella Conquers the Toilet! If I had a sword and shield handy I could take on a dragon or two. Maybe even a vampire.

Well ... maybe not.

I got dressed. I felt completely awkward, wrapped up in three layers everywhere. I hadn't even wrapped my head in my "scarf", and I was already sweltering, sweating buckets into the tee and PJs that formed the layer closest to me. Good thing I had put on the "mittens" last. It was a ludicrous task: picking up that last sweater that was my scarf. I felt like a complete buffoon.

I lumbered over to the door, sweater/scarf under my arm, fresh panties and pad in wrapped into a ball in hand, and examined the door latch. After one attempt at opening the door in my mittened hand, I decided the best course of action was to remove the mitten. Got the door open, mitten back on my sweaty hand, and scarf wrapped around my head as quickly as I could in my arctic exploration suit.

During those brief seconds, the cold from the outside came through the door and kissed my exposed hand, neck and face. I was _hot,_ but still I shivered a bit. Fortunately, my covered areas stayed warm, and that gave me the confidence to push forward. I took my first step forward. My triple-socked foot crunched through the snow.

...

After fifty steps away from the cabin, the cold had become friends with my feet. I wiggled my toes occasionally. _I can do this._ The tree that Rosalie had felled wasn't in sight yet. That was worrisome. I had to turn my whole body to look back at the cabin through the trees. Seeing it, cosy and snug in the distance was a great comfort to me. At least I could get back if worse came to worst. But the way it called to me to return to it was annoying.

I lost count of the steps sometime after that. I also lost feeling in my feet. No, that's not right, the feeling in my feet _was_ gone for a short time, but then the dull pain came after that. As the cold crept past my ankles, stealing its way up my legs, I saw the tree ahead. You know the one, right? The one with the cross embedded in it? That one. I forced my rebellious legs to move more quickly toward that goal.

It was about halfway, right? Wasn't it? Distances were so hard to judge with Rosalie. I clambered up the tree to my seat, my legs grateful for the break, but still feeling no warmer, and looked back.

No cabin.

This was not good. I looked harder.

Still no cabin.

I looked down and was relieved to see my trail was clear in the snow. It was a bright day today, which meant it was cold, but that also meant I could see where I was going and where I had come from. The still air still moved enough to touch my eyeballs and the slight raccoon line of skin my sweater scarf didn't cover. It also was seeping under both sweaters now: the one on my head and the one I actually wore as a shirt. Somehow the knit wasn't tight enough to entirely block it out. It felt like tendrils of cold were insinuating themselves into and then under my skin.

I looked ahead. I couldn't see the outhouse.

Hm. I didn't expect this turn of events. I had thought all I needed to do was to reach the tree, then all I would need to do is to go to the outhouse from there. So now what?

Didn't Rosalie drop the tree across the path from the cabin to the outhouse? I thought so, but I couldn't quite remember the exact angle, and I couldn't see the 'path' that Rosalie traversed with ease. Couldn't I be forgiven for being a bit preoccupied at the time, spinning through the air and then having a tree land right next to me? I wish I had paid more attention then for my situation now, but as much as I tried to be angry at me then, how could I have planned for the next day when I didn't even know, at the time, that I had one more minute?

Go back, or go forward?

Going back would do nothing for my now more pressing condition. I mean, what's the whole point of me being out here if I just turned back? Besides, I was about halfway, right?

I slid off the tree on the other side, took a few steps forward, and then took in the whole tree, end-to-end. I adjusted my direction a bit, using myself, and the tree to draw a line to where the outhouse should be, and marched off, not looking back.

I thought I heard the tree laughing at me as I walked away. The cold that hadn't left me, even as I sat on the tree, wormed its way up from my legs into my midsection, working its way toward my heart.

* * *

**A/N: Lester Joseph "George" Gillis** (December 6, 1908—November 27, 1934) was a hot-headed bankrobber, Catholic and devoted family man, who died from bullet wounds in a shoot-out with FBI agents near Chicago. The phrase attributed to him is from the character in the movie _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_ produced by the Coen brothers.


	19. Walking in Sunshine

**Chapter summary:** Stupid human! Telling me the best way to kill her. As if I needed the advice. And then rhapsodizing about her stupid _sweet BLOOD!_ Hunting. Again. I HATE HER! Wait. What's this? She's outside walking through the snow _IN SOCKS?_ Stupid human.

* * *

So, this is what it feels like to die. I stumbled along, remembering Rosalie's words from long ago — _keep moving_ — but I no longer walked in a straight line. What was the point, anyway? If the tree was a half-way mark, then I must have passed the outhouse to my left or to my right a long time ago.

A long time ago.

And what would happen if it magically appeared right in front of me? It wouldn't be Rosalie's toasty centrally-steam-heated outhouse. Oh, no! It would be the same temperature as the snow as I was walking through ... in my socks. My frozen brain sent a message to what I hoped were my toes to wiggle. I didn't feel any response, perhaps the message was frozen in transit?

I knew someone had made this brilliant plan back in that swelteringly hot cabin — oh! how I wish I had a bank account of heat from there ... I think I would've gone into overdraft by now, but at least I would have something more than the memory of heat to warm me — I cursed that smug little girl in that cabin and her "brilliant" plans.

I hated that girl. Why did she have to kill me? Was it a career goal of hers? Actually, there seemed to be a line forming: Rosalie, the wolves, and now myself.

I was a complete mess: mucus formed two trails from my nose to my mouth, the once hot breath condensed around my now ineffectual sweater scarf adding more yuck around my mouth, and my eyes teared up from the cold adding to the agony that was my face.

I stopped to take stock. The mocking sun glowed directly overhead, high noon, but did not provide one iota of heat. How cruel! Why must the brightest days in winter be the coldest, the most brutal? The light reflecting off the snow on the ground, also known as the daggers slicing into what were my feet, nearly blinded me, hurting my eyes, keeping the tears flowing in a steady stream. I looked around again, hopelessly, for that magical, mystical outhouse to appear somewhere — anywhere — where I could see it and walk to. It wouldn't be warmer, but at least I could get my feet out of the snow, take off the socks and breathe on them at bit.

No outhouse.

Maybe I had gone too far to the right? I adjusted a bit to the left and looked hopefully in that direction.

Do you know the feeling when you get lost? You don't know you're lost until your hopelessly lost. Did you know that? When you're lost, you can't just say, "Well, I'll go back to the last place where I knew where I was, and backtrack from there." because you can't, because you're lost. I looked back at my trail. I could try to get back to the tree, I might make it there by nightfall. The zig-zag that was my trail mocked me. It said: "This time." Yes, this time I couldn't work my way out of it. I was going to die.

But that was okay. Actually, the pain had left me, and I felt numb ... actually I felt kind of good. A little tiny voice in my head screamed that this euphoric feeling was _not _okay, but I ignored it. What did it know? I looked back ahead, and commanded my legs forward.

They didn't move.

Well, I was kind of tired anyway. Perhaps I could rest here for a bit. That sounded reasonable. A little rest wouldn't kill me, and after that, I'd be as right as rain. I took the sweater off my head, and rolled it up to make a little pillow. The air kissed my now exposed cheeks comfortingly. I knelt down into the snow and looked for the best place to put my makeshift pillow. With the terrain being uneven I wanted to lie the right way so I wouldn't roll off the pillow. That would be unpleasant. Hm, how was this supposed to work? Thinking proved hard, besides, I was only going to rest for a little while ... I dropped the sweater onto the ground, and it unraveled into an untidy heap. This bothered me in an abstract way, and I knelt over to fix it up when I heard it.

It was the sound of a gale. I looked up from my shirt — I still needed to fix that pillow — and saw the oddest thing. It was a wall of snow, a wave, slicing across my field of vision. But it wasn't: the snow whorled and eddied and danced ... it actually looked like fire. Not that it _was_ on fire, but it actually _looked_ like a long line of white flame. At its head was a white torch, like the beam from a lighthouse. As I watched it with curiosity, it arced so that it was heading straight for me, and then, just as suddenly, it was in front of me, the angel from my dream.

But my dream had nothing on the angel. Clothed in white, but her face was the sun, a white sun, with eyes that were the brightest yellow flames, her wings unfurled ten feet out from her in either direction, swirling with majesty, her hands held lightning bolts — no, they _were_ lightning bolts — her long golden hair waved like the ocean I hear Pa describe.

But this angel was Fury. She had come at me screaming, lips aglow with the brightest of reds, and pure anger burned in her flaming eyes. And now before me, her lips sealed her mouth closed and her eyes burned a darker golden color.

Golden color?

"Rosalie?" I asked. I thought she was a vampire. Her wings swirled away from her as she stopped. Wait a minute! Where did her wings go? But her face was still the sun: painful to look at directly, but impossible to look away from. She glared at me.

I was happy to see her. She looked so nice, all sunny like that. "You know, it's good to see you. I need to tell you something after I rest here a bit."

Then I saw something I thought I'd never see. The fury on her face was replaced by something different. Was that compassion? Fury-compassion-fury-compassion alternated and warred for supremacy on the sun before me. Eventually they made a compromise: they settled into irritation.

Well, it was good to see her, but she needed to resolve whatever issues she had on her own for now. I lay down on my rumpled sweater, not bothering to fix it anymore, and closed my eyes.

Movement. Being lifted. I grumbled. How can a girl get her sleep under these kinds of conditions? Angels or vampires or whatever she was didn't need to sleep, but I sure did. I opened my eyes to give her a piece of my mind, the piece that said "quit it!", but instead of telling her off, I reconsidered when I saw the outhouse right in front of me. Oh, yeah. I knew I was out here for some reason.

Actually, I had cheated a bit along the way. What is it about the cold that exacerbates the need to go? Whatever it was, I hated it, and now, so did my PJ bottoms, panties and pants. Perhaps I could ask her to move the hideaway locale to parts south? ... We could go to Hawaii and join the petition for Statehood. I imagined Rosalie in a grass skirt and snickered. The sun that held me looked at me with stormy-fiery eyes. She opened the door, and laid me on the shelf that held the seats.

"Don't move!" She grated out each word slowly and distinctly. And irritatedly.

Yup. It was Rosalie. 'Bossy' was somewhere on The List — I couldn't recall which number it was right now, as thinking was still a rather difficult concept for me ... calling me 'girl' was number 1, so I guess bossiness was number 2 or 3, tied with her shrugging and ambiguity — and, when I looked at her in the darkened outhouse, she wasn't the sun anymore. She was just plain old most-beautiful-creature-in-the-world Rosalie. I'd have to add that one to the list: even when she doesn't shine like the sun, she's got the rest of the world beat in the beauty department, hands down.

Well, 'don't move' wasn't a disagreeable order for me to follow right now, so I closed my eyes and waved bye-bye with one sock-covered hand. Just when I started to drift off again, the door opened and in walked Miss Bossy-Pants with two buckets. "Leave me alone!" I grumbled, but it was just a matter of form: there was just no arguing with her sometimes. Light from the candle, then steam. She held me upright and disrobed my lower half.

"Hey!" I actually liked my rather forceful argument, as it made a lot of sense to me, but Rosalie continued on, ignoring me as usual.

Boy, was she going to get it when we got back to the cabin, but good!

She held me with one arm under my arms and around my back, and seated me on the toilet.

"Would you make up your mind!" My complaint came out softly and sounded rather weak. I couldn't decide whether she was nice for a bossy person, or irritating as a helpful one. Always angry, always saving my life. Always running off, always right there at my darkest moments. This flip-flopping was getting rather annoying. I rested my head on her shoulder — it was actually rather comfy for granite or whatever — and finally drifted off.

...

I woke screaming.

No, you don't understand: from no dreams, no nothing, oblivion to agonizing pain lancing through my entire body. It was confusing, and I was bewildered. As I screamed my way into consciousness, I took my bearings. I was upright. I was facing the stove, some distance from it. The blanket tented behind me, and was held to me, and I was held up, by Rosalie.

Of course I was naked. What was her issue with my clothes!

But it didn't matter right now. What mattered was that my feet had gone from nonexistent to two pools of excruciating pain. And my hands, too. That wasn't the bad part. The bad part was that the numbness was fading away from my legs and arms. I didn't want that numbness to fade away, because I felt the replacement coming. It came. The pain, oh, the pain!

I screamed.

I couldn't form coherent thought. I couldn't move my mouth out of the 'O'. I couldn't escape from the pain.

I screamed. And, as I screamed, I now could do something new: I cried.

This, you see, was progress. I couldn't celebrate my gain, however: pain lanced through me again, gleefully.

I could do nothing but give myself to it as I screamed.


	20. A Question

**Chapter summary:** She keeps saving my life, but whenever she's around, Death keeps calling for me. Once? Twice? Maybe a coincidence. But four times in one week? How do I ask the question? I wonder how she'll take it. Like everything else? One way to find out.

* * *

I lay in bed, propped up in sitting position, my body bundled tightly in the blanket, my arms outside it at my sides. My PJs this time were much more austere: just a tee and a pad inside panties. It was Rosalie who had put these clothes on, of course. After my screams subsided with the agony, I didn't even have the strength to sit up in bed. She had carried me there like I was a rag doll and had laid me down so gently on it. She had propped me up to put on the tee and had to pull my arms though the sleeves. I was utterly exhausted: still drunk from the all too recent experience with the pain seizing me replacing the numbness of the cold and then ever-so-slowly seeping out, as it was reluctant to relinquish its hold over me. I barely even noticed her putting the pad and panties on me. When I did, I was too far gone to be embarrassed. It was almost funny to me: as she slid the panties _up _my legs, it felt as if she embodied the opposite of the groom at a wedding reception: _restoring_ my panties instead of removing the garter. And, after wrapping the blanket about me securely, here she was now, feeding me. Rosalie brought me another cup of soup, this time in a real cup. She alternated cups of soup and water. I guess she got the cups from wherever she got the clothes. It was hard for me to tell which one was better, the soup or the water. I liked them both so much right now.

After so many years looking after Pa, I had forgotten what it felt like to be cared for by somebody else. I wondered if this is what it felt like with Ma when I was a little girl. She pressed the bowl to my lips, and I took another sip. The heat of the soup pooled in my mouth for a second, and then slid down my throat to heat me at my very core from the inside out. She moved the cup away, reaching for the water.

"Ro..." I hacked and coughed. My throat was raw from the screaming. I hope I wouldn't get an infection. That would be bad.

She looked at me, hesitating with the cup of water at my lips. I sipped, and she moved it away.

I whispered, careful of the throat: "Rosalie, I have to ask you something, and I have to tell you something. Will you please hold my hand?" This was going to be hard, and I needed all the support I could get, even from Rosalie. Especially from Rosalie.

I turned my hand closest to hers palm up. She gave my hand a quizzical look as it tried to twitch from the surface of the bed, but then placed hers in mine. I looked at my hand and closed it over hers as tightly as I could.

"Whatever happens, don't let go, okay?" I looked back to her eyes ... they narrowed. "Please?"

She thought for a moment and then shrugged. So stubborn. It wasn't a promise, but it wasn't a no. And it was still annoying, but I had more important fights to fight right now.

"Well, okay. I want to start by saying that I'll try to be a good girl. I'm sorry about what I said this morning. I did tell you that it may not be what you wish to hear, but I didn't know that it would affect you like that. I'm sorry. I didn't mean any harm."

She did narrow her eyes a bit at that, but she didn't let go of my hand.

"And thank you. Thank you for saving my life again, and thank you for feeding me and clothing me and taking care of me. I know I'm a lot of trouble for you, I'm sure, so I'm sorry for that, but thank you for doing all that in spite of me. You know, ..." I considered, "I really wish you could talk now so we could have a conversation. I know what I'm going to say is going to make you angry with me. And what I'm saying may be wrong. But I've thought about it. And it needs to be said now. So, I'm sorry we can't talk this over, and I'm sorry for what I'm about to say. But, please ... please just hear me out before you do something like storm out or scream or kill me, okay?"

I looked at her intently. She already looked angry, and I hadn't even started yet. So I pleaded: "Please? Because I can't even lift my arms! I'm so weak, so if you did something, like leave, I would probably die before you came back. So, please?"

If she could have sighed or shouted or something, I think she would have, with the way that she looked at me, but instead I saw her struggle with herself — I must really be saying things she didn't want me to say, or something — and eventually nodded.

Hey, wow, I got something other than a shrug. Stop the presses!

"Thanks." was all I said to that. _Let's not push it, shall we, Bella?_

"Okay, so, the way I see it, what has been happening? I could explain in a couple of ways. They may not be right, but this is all I've got to work on. So, I'm going to tell you them both, and then it's all up to you what you want to do with it ... so, the hard one first. And, again, I'm sorry to say what I have to say, but just bear with me."

How to start? I just didn't know. She was looking at me, holding my hand, and I was about to tell her that she _was_ a monster.

"Well, it's like this ..."

This was so hard.

"You promise not to let go?"

She looked away for a second, grimaced, and then lifted my hand a little with left hand — the hand that was holding mine — and then placed her right hand under mine. She had to bend forward slightly to hold my hand thus, and she raised her eyebrows at me, as if to say, _I'm really holding your hand here._ I could see her impatience.

"Okay. Well, looking over what's happened in bringing me here — and I hope this isn't the case, but — it appears to be like ..." All or nothing. I squeezed as hard as I could on her hand with mine and whispered: "Well, do you like to play with your food?"

I had expected anything, I thought. But I didn't expect this. My words reached out an slapped her in her perfect face. She flinched slightly, but then her face hardened, and she rose slowly, standing, and looked at me with a stony expression.

I breathed in at her reaction. I hadn't surprised her because the statement wasn't true. I had surprised her because I had guessed _right!_

She took in my shocked expression, and then she smiled her terrifying, dazzlingly beautiful smile. I saw her perfect and pure white teeth gleaming in the dim light of the cabin. Then, deliberately, she took in a breath of air and, with it, a breath of _me_. Her eyes went from vivid yellow to coal black, but she didn't speed off. No, she was absolutely still, and in that stillness, she began to lean in toward me.

I couldn't look away from her eyes. I had thought, when her eyes changed like that, that they went flat black. But, no: these eyes were the darkest black, but a fire, a black flame, burned within them. And the flame was hungry.

As she leaned closer, I saw the slightest distinction between her black irises and her pupils, but then I got lost in the twin pools that were her eyes. Their depth went on and on, and I wondered, looking into those eyes, if this was what forever felt like.

Her eyes went on forever, and the only thing anchoring me to reality, to this earth, was her cold, unearthly hand holding mine. At least she kept her promise and didn't let go.

As my end closed to me, I had that one comfort: at least she still held my hand.


	21. Scary Monsters

**Chapter summary:** Gratitude. I didn't expect it. I've saved her life 4 times; I've hunted 6 times this week. For her. But this: "play with my food"? This needs to be corrected. Now. Ah? Oh! her scent. _Her BLOOD!_ Just one little sip won't hurt her, will it?

* * *

She leaned in toward me, eye to eye, and I was painfully aware that put her teeth just above my neckline, but I couldn't move.

And why was that? First of all, I was effectively bound to the bed, rolled up, as I was in the blanket — _corn dog à la Bella_. I could just imagine rolling out of the bed only to trip over myself and the blanket, cracking my head open on the the floor. _Some escape that would be!_ That would be tantamount to me simply slashing my own neck and pouring my blood in a bowl for her to drink. Fat lot of good that would do, my graceful escape. Second of all, I couldn't even lift my arm, anyway, much less my body, as I was so weak from my adventure to the outhouse. And third of all, I was completely mesmerized, her eyes seemed to pull my soul right out of my body, and the scent wafting from her, especially from her parted lips, enchanted me. Mesmerized, terrified, pinned. I probably wouldn't even know that the blood was being sucked out of me, or even feel it go, until after I was dead.

And fourth of all, my hand was sandwiched between her hands. Because I asked her to. No, because I begged her to. Yup, that's me: Bella-the-genuis.

Her eyes were an inch from mine. She held that position, and she stared into my eyes, and I couldn't look away from hers. Any second now she would rip my throat right out. My heart began to accelerate, until it was racing faster than I had ever felt it. I thought it would burst! It was pounding so hard, as if it were trying to escape my chest to its own freedom or trying to keep my alive for one more second ... or trying to pump the blood into her perfect mouth when it latched onto an artery. My breaths came in ragged gasps as her eyes fixed me to this moment. And then she spoke with precision and determination ...

"Rosalie Hale does not drink human blood."

... and she leaned away from me, slowly, rippling with pure but caged power, easing into her seat.

Holding my hand.

I couldn't process what she said. I was stunned, and the walls started to shimmer, moving on their own.

"Breathe, girl."

Oh, yeah. Right. Breathing would help. When she had spoken, terror had completely closed my throat and stopped my lungs. I restarted my heart; it began beating rapid-fire and then I panted, feeling the air fill my lungs, electrifying every cell in my body with life again. It took me a few moments before I could control the hyperventilation. As I was doing that, I watched Rosalie ... as if I could do anything else? If I was gulping in the air, then she certainly wasn't. She had only taken that one breath; now, her chest wasn't moving — she wasn't breathing at all. I saw the black fire in her eyes caramelize to a dark gold and then eventually brighten to a yellow. Flecks of red danced in her irises as she looked at me, dispassionately.

As my breathing returned to normal, I reviewed what she had said to me. She didn't drink blood? That didn't make sense. I _saw_ what she was doing to Dolly. _I saw it._ No, wait. She said she didn't drink _human_ blood.

_Huh._ "So, ... that's why you left this morning when I told you my dream?"

A nod.

"Wow! Would my blood really taste that good?"

She paused and shook her head slowly at that. It wouldn't taste that good? Then, why the reaction that she had to ... Waitaminute! "You mean, it would taste _better than that?"_

She nodded her head slowly, looking at me the whole time.

"But, how do you know that?"

She pulled her right hand from under my hand and then touched a finger to the side of her nose. Oh, of course; she could smell it. But then she touched a finger to her lips and then to mine.

_Huh?_ Had she been kissing me? On the lips? When? While I slept? And, why? I blushed really, really hard.

_"You kissed me?"_ My fears about living the story of _Carmilla_ had just materialized. I just didn't know how to handle this revelation. I had never imagined that I would be living in the stories I read. The thought seemed just too surreal for me.

She rolled her eyes, however, and smacked her forehead, shaking her head from side to side vigorously. A definitive _no_ from her. Okay, she hadn't kissed me. That was a relief. Or, at least, one less thing to worry about. As it stood I had plenty of things on that plate already. I had told myself to develop a relationship with her, so as to make killing me more difficult for her and escape easier around her relaxed guard, but I had in no way imagined a relationship developing in _that_ direction!

But if she hadn't kissed me, then what did her gesture mean? Gosh! This was just so frustrating, this silent game of questions! I had forgotten the no-talking rule, and I guess the rule was back in full force ... but wait, she had talked to me just a minute ago!

"How come you're not talking anymore now?" She looked at me, considering.

Everything stopped.

I wondered what she was thinking about. Carefully, she raised her legs onto the chair where she sat and crossed them, Indian-style. She straightened her back. That is to say, she straightened her back _more: _sitting up ramrod straight. She then closed her eyes, turned her hand in mine so that the back of her hand was in my palm. Now, both our palms were facing up. What was going on with her?

She became very still — her face unreadable behind her closed eyes — and then she opened her mouth and breathed in a gasp of air through clenched teeth quickly. Her left hand in mine balled into a fist. I could see the strain she exerted to hold herself together by looking at that hand: it seemed like her knuckles wanted to burst through the skin. Her hand trembled ever so slightly in mine, vibrating with some unseen force.

She gasped out: "The temptation's ... almost too great ... for ... right now. We'll talk la..." and her mouth finished what her empty lungs did not allow: _later._

Wow! I would never take the ability to speak words for granted. Not ever again.

Her eyes remained closed for a full minute, and her rigid position did not relax. Every one of her muscles, from the ones in her hand in mine, to her arms, to the ones rippling across her neck and strained on her face, were working to keep her rooted in her position. Kept her from pouncing on me, I guessed. Then, after a time, I saw the very slightest release. She didn't relax, as "relax" was much too strong a word for the rigidity of her frame. But it appeared she had won some internal battle. It was then that she opened her eyes. They were my color. Chocolate brown. No: golden brown. No. They were changing color, as before. I watched them as settled on the brightest of yellows, the one constant in her eyes were those rare flecks of red.

She smiled at me.

I had never in my life seen anything as beautiful. She _was_ the angel of my dreams; the angel on the snow. And finally, I think I understood why angels were always saying "Be not afraid." Rosalie was the most beautiful and most terrifying vision I had ever beheld.

Without her hand in mine, I wouldn't have believed that she was real. I wanted to touch her face, to strengthen that belief, because my sight alone wasn't enough. I tried lifting my hand from under hers, but I couldn't even make my muscles twitch anymore, so overcome by everything.

"Can I ..." I cleared my throat, its pain bringing me back, slightly, to the here and now. I whispered in awe: "May I touch your face?"

She considered from a moment, tilting her head to one side, and then gracefully uncrossed her legs, rose from her seat and stood by me, all in one fluid movement. Before I knew what she was doing, she leaned in again quickly, and put her cheek to my cheek.

Um, well. That wasn't exactly what I was going for: I had just wanted to touch her cheek with my fingers. I was expecting her to lift my hand to her face. But now that she was right _here,_ her scent blotted out all ability for me to reason, and all I could do was to try to remember to keep breathing: her presence completely overwhelmed me.

I don't know how much time passed like this. Three million years? I wouldn't have been surprised. Then she pulled back smoothly. Wasn't her skin supposed to be cold? My cheek where her cheek touched burned as if I had been stung over and over again by a hornet. Not really like that: my cheek didn't hurt, _per se,_ but it burned like a brand. Did frostbite feel like that? So hot and numb in the affected area?

Then she _did_ lift my fingers to her cheek. It was _warm_. Well, not warm, but it wasn't cold. Did my skin burn her, like hers burnt mine? We just touched cheeks for a moment in time, for an eternity, but so much went on in that moment, that my mind felt overloaded. It was too much information for me to handle. What did it all mean?

She smoothly returned to her seat. If England had a Queen, she would be taking pointers from Rosalie on how to sit just so.

What had happened? She told me she didn't drink from people, but that my blood was better than I dreamed, but now it looked like I was on my own for figuring things out, because talking for her came at such a high price. _I_ came at such a high price. Why? Why bother? I mean, I guess vampires really are made to kill people. "If I taste that good, why settle for animals? What's to stop you from taking me instead? Why not just take my blood?"

She straightened up in her chair at that question and looked down her nose at me, one eyebrow raised condescendingly. I remembered that proud look from our forest getaway chat.

"Oh. Because you're a Hale?"

She didn't even deign to nod. She just looked at me as if I were a small child stating the obvious.

Well, what did that mean for me? She was going to kill me, but then she wouldn't drink my blood? Big whoop. Dead was dead, right? It seemed somehow very important to her, however, how she killed people, so I repressed my sarcasm and anger and pushed forward.

"Okay ..." I worked _very hard_ not to roll my eyes and not to add the careless _"whatever"._ Very hard. "I suppose that's one way of interpreting what I asked, but there's something else. I come from a small town, but my Pa's the sheriff, so I hear things, not from Ekalaka, but it comes across the state. There are people who aren't good folk. Even in law; especially in law. Pa's not like that, but even where we are, he has to step in at times, you know? Settle disputes, or calm down a drunk. Even in a small town, Pa's word is law. People listen. He could abuse that, but he doesn't."

"My Pa is a good man." I looked directly at her, emphasizing each word.

"But not everyone's like that. I've heard the stories. The crime's bad in Butte, but you know what's worse? The law. Pa doesn't tell me, but a girl hears things. When something happens in Butte, there are some law men you don't want to see. They settle things first and ask the questions later. And the way they settle things ... well ..."

I looked down.

"You know, they run that city. Everything. Nothing goes on that they don't know. There are the crime bosses, but even they know who's on top. It's a game to them, those lawmen: they play all friendly. They give you enough rope for you to wiggle around in, and then they jerk it back, arbitrarily, and hang you with it. Literally. They're vicious, dangerous, ... charming people. They've got everybody cowed: the criminals and the common folk. Because when that law comes to break up a situation, everybody's a victim. This is the New West, after all, and justice still comes quickly and brutally, even in this day and age."

I looked at her intently. Her face looked uninterested. She was Town, after all: maybe she had heard this or seen this already. Maybe she had seen this personally, as her own fate unfolded before her eyes. I guessed the King family and the police were in tight. After all, the Kings practically owned Rochester, from what I had gathered from my research. Who else would the two guards be that night with Royce? Who else but the best, I was betting. Cops. Off-duty cops making some extra bit on the King payroll.

I pushed on: "So, I'm not saying you're doing this to me: you don't look like the type. But what do I know? I don't have the advantage of perspective and distance from the situation. I know the victim often loses the ability to think rationally. So, if this is your game, if you like to play me and then reel me in, if somehow you need to feel better by bringing me low, then I want to let you know that you've won, okay?"

A shocked look crossed her face, she started to rise from her seat.

"No!" I interjected quickly, then coughed a couple of times — _watch the throat, _a little voice warned me — "I know this is ridiculous, okay? But just let me finish, please! This is what I see happening: you let me go, I get into trouble, and then you rescue me, time and again."

She glared at me.

"Yes, I know it's my fault, okay? I'm not blaming you, all right? But these situations keep happening over and over again. What if they aren't random? I have to ask that question! What if you are setting them up for me to fall into? If you're breaking me down, it's worked, okay? I can't even move my body, and my mind's a fog. You've won. If you need to hear that, I'll say that. If you want me me to beg, I'll beg. If you don't want me caving in like this, because it takes away the fun, I'll fight as best as I can ... not that I'm up for much more. If you want me to scream, you've already seen plenty, but I'll do whatever you want."

I looked down at my hand, and at her perfect hand in mine.

"I don't have the strength to go on anymore. If this is what you want, you've won. All you need to do is give me the sign, I just have that much left in me ... one more little thing, and I'm broken. Whatever you want, you've got it. You don't even need to knock me down with a feather: I'm already down. Just snap your fingers" — _your angelic fingers, _I thought looking at her perfect hand — "and it's over: you won't need to waste your time with me any more, and you can play a new game that doesn't require all this trouble."

I shrugged my shoulders. I couldn't imagine, in this case, or in any case, for that matter, why anyone would go through all this trouble for me, anyway. I just wasn't worth it.

I looked back up to her face, waiting for a sign from her. I got one, all right. She was shaking her head slowly from side to side, disgust evident there, as if I had vomited all over her instead of spoken, as if I had ruined another one of her Chanel dresses, ... as if what I had just said was the most revolting thing she had ever heard. Maybe I had. I did, after all, just call her a monster, _again, _and probably, as I saw in her eyes, one worse than the ones that _just_ fed on human blood_._ I sighed.

"Look," I began angrily, but that was a mistake. I had forgotten how delicate a position I was in, and the word, spoken in a normal tone, and not a whisper, irritated my throat. I coughed. That hurt. But then that cough brought on a fit of coughing that wouldn't stop, and my throat hurt more and more. I also started to feel wracking pain through my ribs as the convulsions shook me apart from the inside out. Tears of pain ran out of my eyes, and the coughing upset my sitting position. I started to topple off the side of the bed, and my eyes widened in desperation, but I didn't have anything in me to catch myself.

But Rosalie did: her look of revulsion turned to one of surprise as I slid, her face probably mirroring my expression. She caught me, righted me, and held me in a gentle bear hug through the fit, but I felt my lungs trying to squeeze their way out of me. "Tighter!" I gasped in a hoarse whisper. She tightened her hold a fraction. However, my throat was so raw that that whisper set off a new round of coughs, and my frame began to shake itself loose.

Was she deaf? I was being torn apart, and this is all she was doing? I desperately conveyed through the fit as best I could for her to tighten her grip more.

She did. I could barely breathe in her hold now. What a relief! The coughing fit subsided under her steel grip. I lived. It felt like only just, however. I meekly cleared my throat, experimentally. I managed that without pain, but my throat sent me a clear warning sign not to try much more.

"Okay," I whispered in her ear, "I think I'm okay now."

There was no reaction from her; she still held onto me tightly, as if it were she who was holding my innards together. Maybe she thought I would explode if she let go?

"It's okay," I reassured her with a whisper, "you can let go now." It _was _kind of hard to breathe; all I could do, under her hold, was take in little sips of air.

Again, there was nothing from her for a minute, but then, slowly, she eased the pressure of her hold. After a moment of just holding me in the lightest of hugs, she seemed to accept my words. She carefully extricated herself from me, and as she returned to her chair, never taking her eyes off mine, her left hand trailed down my arm and returned to rest in my hand. Concern wreathed her face.

"Thanks," I whispered. I filled my lungs, experimentally. I didn't explode, so that was a good thing.

"Now, where was I, before I so rudely interrupted myself?" I tried to make light of my situation, and put a warm smile on my face. She returned the smile tentatively, but it didn't touch her eyes: they were still watching me with concern.

_Oh, yes,_ I remembered, _I had just finished calling her a monster._ Well, there _was_ one good thing about my coughing fit: it pretty much proved that that wasn't the case.

"Oh, right." I was very careful to make sure my voice stayed even. My throat was raw; I really needed a drink of water, but I had to say this first before I allowed us to be sidetracked with my frail human demands. "So this isn't just a game for you, but I hope you can see given the circumstances why I had to ask the question, right? I mean, really: wolves attack me — did you herd them to me? — and you providentially save me at the last possible second. I fall in a river and would have died of the cold, but there just happens to be an abandoned cabin with a lighted fire all nice and warm to restore me. I get lost in the snow, and just as I'm giving up, you show up out of nowhere. Three times in a course of a week where I could have died, but each time you're there to save me. I've never had a close call before, so what was I to think? So, I'm glad that you've actually pulled me from the jaws of death each time, that this isn't a game for you. But no matter what your intentions are for me, the result is turning out the same ... as you can see, this is killing me, Rosalie."

I couldn't look at her to see how my words were affecting her. I just looked at her hand.

"This is killing me, Rosalie," I repeated, "so if you don't want me to die soon, you have to help me live, okay?" I did look up then and met her intent gaze.

"You say that you never forget anything, so you know from your own human past that I need three square meals a day." She looked surprised at that ... how could she forget her human experience? "Yes, three. And the soup, although it's good, is not a square meal. I need a variety of food to get the protein and vitamins and minerals and grains I need to say alive. Do you know what that means?"

She shook her head.

"Okay, so you don't know. That's a relief." At least she wasn't breaking down my body bit by bit on purpose. "That means that I need oats or cereals in the morning for the bran, with milk for the calcium. And usually eggs and bacon ... my Pa likes three eggs in the morning, but I just take one. And juice for the vitamins. I need some kind of meat for lunch and for supper, but I also need to eat fruits and vegetables, too." I felt a little bit like I was a school teacher the way I was lecturing, but I reminded myself that she didn't know and pushed on.

"And water, Rosalie, especially water. The last few days I've only been able to drink — what? — less than a cup? I'm supposed to drink like a gallon or so a day to stay alive." Again, Rosalie acted surprised, mouthing _'a gallon?'_ "Yes, about that much. So, if you want me to stick around for more than one more day ... may I please have a drink of water now?" My throat really was parched, and I feared another coughing fit.

She instantly grabbed the cup by the bed and pressed it to my lips. I drank and I drank and I drank. I finished the water off, but my throat was still dry and parched.

"Do you have any more?" I asked her, but she shook her head _no,_ holding up one finger. She pulled her hand out of mine, taking the empty cup with her, and disappeared outside. Not even seconds later she came back in and placed the cup on the stove. I bet she got some snow or ice and was melting it.

She placed her hands on the stove — I would never get used to that! — and grimaced, somehow displeased. I saw why right away, because she went to the pile of wood by the door and grabbed a couple of big logs. She undampened the stove, opened it up — the fire _was_ burning pretty low; not that _I_ would notice, bundled up as I was — and placed a log at a time into the stove, adjusting to her satisfaction the logs in the fire and embers with her bare hands. She closed the stove doors and readjusted the damper.

A normal person would have checked the fire visually to see if it needed more logs. A normal person would have used a poker and tongs to place and then to adjust the logs in the fire.

I would never mistake Rosalie for a normal person. _Ever._

Rosalie brought the cup of water over to me, but instead of placing it to my lips — thank goodness she didn't; I didn't relish the thought of scraping my burnt lips off the cup still hot from the stove! — she reached down and brought the other cup, the cup of soup, to my lips. I took a sip, but I nearly spit it out all over the place.

While her right hand was coaxing soup from the cup to my mouth, her left hand returned to mine. _It was warm._ After becoming accustomed to the iciness of her touch, the surprising warmth of it caused my heart to skip a beat. Her hand almost felt as warm as a human hand, and the unfamiliar feel of normality coming from this unearthly being in front of me was too confusing for me to accept or to comprehend.

I did manage to rein in my shock and to swallow the soup, but I couldn't help but to steal a glance down at her hand. Rosalie noticed, of course. She grinned at me and lifted her hand to my cheek gently rubbing her knuckles in one stroke before returning her hand to mine again.

It felt like nothing I'd ever felt before. Her cheek was cold marble, but her hand was marble smooth, but warm, and the area where she stroked my cheek felt as if it were soothed but scarred at the same time. The heat of it stayed there a long time, as she continued to pour the soup into me. Then I realized the heat was there because I was blushing. I blushed at the realization. I really wished that one blush would cancel out the other, because I knew it reminded Rosalie of her lost humanity, and I hated the thought of paining her in this way.

But if she were pained, she didn't give the slightest hint of it in her face. She seemed just to be concentrating on tending to me, so I tried to put my own embarrassment out of my mind. That actually helped: I felt my face cooling as Rosalie put the empty soup cup down and brought up more water for me to drink. I finished cup again, and she left right away with both cups, going outside, putting one cup on the stove and filling the other from the soup pot. She put the soup cup on the table and returned to me, sitting as before, her left hand in mind. It was cold again, of course, but this somehow seemed normal to me now.

I looked at her and whispered: "So, are you ready for the next thing?"

She smiled at me.

"Thank you for giving me the soup and the water, but that brings up another human need. In the morning when I wake up, about a half hour after each meal, and just before bed, I need to go. I actually need to go right now, as you've been helping me drink for a little while now ... so, would you take me to the outhouse?"

It was rather funny, actually. _She_ was the kidnapper, but _I_ was making all the demands on her. _Crime does not pay, kids!_ I almost sniggered at my thought, but her serious face didn't leave any room for my frivolity.

Thankfully, she didn't look annoyed. She disappeared, and then reappeared with the ember pail, filling it with embers, by of course lifting the cheerily burning logs she had just put in the fire with her bare hands to collect the embers from underneath, and then disappeared again. Not a minute later she was gathering me up and a race through the night — a race that took no time for her, but one that had been a fruitless three hours for me — had me sitting on the seat in front of the "Poop here" sign in an outhouse that was already saturated in heat from the steam. I didn't follow the instructions behind this time, but I did get rid of a lot of water.

And somehow, without me seeing her do it, she still remembered to bring spare panties and a pad.

I would have forgotten that minor but important detail in all the whirl of activity, but she didn't.

She had to pull down my panties, sit me down on the seat, and snake her arm under me hold me up, because I certainly didn't even have the strength to sit upright. She had to dress me in the new pad and panties, too, as I was a jellyfish adrift in the ocean. She had to do everything for me.

And I had spent the day accusing her of monstrous crimes. After she had just saved my life. Again.

Would I be so generous, so selfless, to someone who had just been so hateful to me if our positions were reversed? For someone I had absolutely no reason to extend myself in that way?

I didn't want to think about those questions, because I couldn't trust myself to give the same answers Rosalie so obviously demonstrated. If she were a monster, what did that make me? Again, I was utterly crushed, humbled, before everything that was her. She wouldn't let me call her kind, but her kindness was a mountain next to any handful of sand that I could offer of my own kindness. I really didn't see myself as kind, anyway: I just saw myself as taking care of things that needed to be taken care of. Rosalie wasn't just kind: she was _heroically_ kind.

"Rosalie, thank you. I wish you could _know_ how kind you really are, but I always tell you the wrong way, so I'll just say 'thank you', and hope someday you'll understand."

She didn't even bother to look at me to acknowledge what I said as she washed me, dressed me and spread the lime.

Yeah, I guess I said it wrong again. She was obviously too tired with my continual screw-ups even to bother being cross with me. I was silent as she raced me back to the cabin — I didn't want another swim in the snow ... not today — I looked a her face the whole time on the way back, but she wouldn't look at me: she looked straight ahead, her face set in hard lines.

When we were inside the noticeably warmer cabin, she placed me gently into the bed, and I called out to her before she made to run off.

"Rosalie!" She looked at me. "Thank you, again, but you can't be with me every second, you just can't. You're going to need to go, like this morning, or like yesterday," — could those centuries of experience have all happened in less that two days? — I continued: "That means I need to do these things by myself. Rosalie, I need boots, I need a jacket, I need a hat and gloves. In fact, I've ruined pretty much all the clothes you got for me, so I need all new clothes, too."

She nodded her head in agreement.

Wow! That went easier than expected.

"But you also have to teach me how to get to the outhouse, too. You have to mark a path or something, and you have to make sure I know how to get there, and that I know how to get back to the cabin, because, if not, this morning, or worse, will happen all over again. _You've_ helped me, but you've got to help _me help me._ Okay?"

Again, she nodded. Again: wow!

"Um, just one more thing?"

She raised an eyebrow.

"Well, just one more thing for now, all right?" _Jeez! Gimme a break!_ It wasn't as if I were making all these demands, or anything ... oh, wait a minute ... I was. Oh, well, there it is. She wants to be kidnapping me, she'd just have to put up will all my needs. I'm not your normal, everyday hostage, after all.

"You wouldn't happen to have a tooth brush and powder, would you?"

She made a show of checking her pockets before she shrugged. Well, at least she had a sense of ... humor? about it. _Hmmm, Rosalie and humor._ Those two words were oddly juxtaposed.

"Well, then, add that to your list ... clothes, over clothes, a variety of food, tooth powder and brushes ... and a bath, you know, some day, right?"

This time, she did roll her eyes.

"Good, now hand me that cup of water."

She smirked at me and crossed her arms. She had an expectant look on her face. Oh, yeah. She probably wanted to make sure that I knew she was in charge. For such a terrifying and powerful ... well, _vampire_, she had such a delicate ego.

Well, whatever floats her boat. "Um, please?"

Her smirk widened into a smile. She got the water off the stove and put it beside the bed ... I hoped she would be here later, for that would be hard for me to reach down to get it. Well, reaching down to get it wouldn't be all that hard — my strength was returning — but pulling myself back up on to the bed after I fell off reaching for it? That would be a different story.

Actually, she looked like she _was_ preparing to go, she turned to leave ...

"Hey! Where are you going?" I demanded in an indignant voice.

I gave her indignant; she gave me impatient: she turned back to me and gestured rapidly toward the table and the much reduced pile of clothes on the floor. Her brows formed a stormy cloud over her eyes.

"No, that can wait!" But she shook her head angrily at me. "No!" I responded, but she _no_ed right back to me. "Well, okay, at least stay with me until after I fall asleep, all right?"

A look of disbelief crossed her face and she spread her arms out, palms out. An obvious _why?_

I looked down: "Well, 'cause ... I'm scared of the dark ..." When I looked up, the expression of disbelief was replaced by scepticism. She didn't believe me. So I had to explain. How embarrassing!

"Yeah, you know," I blushed and hid behind my hands — _hey, my hands worked again!_ — "because of all the scary monsters that come out in the dark ..."

I heard an indrawn breath, and then the strangest thing: strangled laughter. I looked. Rosalie was bent over double, laughing — _at me!_ — arms crossed over her stomach, holding herself together. But she was staring straight at me with pitch black, ravenous eyes, and the teeth in her laughing mouth glinted in the cabin light, and her bent over position was half a crouch and half a ... what? I didn't know the word for it, but I could see her bracing herself, holding herself back ... holding herself from attacking me. I just stared as her terrifying laughing fit died away. I guess she had enough air left for a sigh, because she hummed it out as she straightened and wiped away an imaginary tear.

I watched as her black eyes turned golden again before I timidly patted the side of the bed. I wasn't so sure about my invitation anymore, but to back out now? Would she be hurt that I rejected her? Or was I being foolhardy at ignoring the danger? She regarded me for a moment, her head tilted to one side. Was she thinking the same things, from a vampire perspective? Was she thinking: _sit with her, with the risk of eating her? Or hurt her feelings by leaving?_

I was actually pleased! I may have been entirely off-base in what I thought her thoughts were, but it felt like I was starting to see things, maybe just a little bit, from her perspective.

Apparently my invitation was accepted. She seemed to brace herself. She came and, pulling me down from the sitting position so that my head rested on the pillow, she pushed me a bit to make room for her to sit and did so.

"Thank you," I murmured, _for everything._ For sitting with me, and not killing me, for putting up with me, for not being the monster you think you are, for your kindness that dwarfs mine.

"You know," I yawned, "this little talk of mine was probably just a wasted effort, so I'm sorry I said all those mean things to you. I don't know if you know this, but we humans are fragile little things. I'll probably cough myself to death tonight or get a throat infection and waste away, because you can't bring me to a hospital, right?" I yawned again. "Well, anyway ..."

As I drifted off, my hand reached out and covered the hand of my own scary monster watching over me this night.

"Thank you," I whispered again, and I slept.


	22. Compulsion

**Chapter summary**: Bella. Come back to me. I will wrap you in a white blanket and hold you. Forever. You are of this world, Bella. Rosalie is not. Leave her. She does not love you. I do. Stay. And I will love you forever. Forever and ever.

* * *

I woke suddenly from a dreamless sleep to the sound of my name being called.

"Ro...?" I had started to ask her what she wanted, but I saw that she was asleep beside me, her arm draped over my blanket, cradling me, so I decided not to disturb her. She looked so peaceful, sleeping like that, all the anger and worries gone. This was the first time that I had seen her patrician face relaxed, and it had a softer look than what I had ever seen. I smiled at her, but then I heard the sound again.

"_-_-_"

It came from outside. It was a gentle susurration, but somehow compelling. Compelling and ... ? I carefully snuck out from under the covers and eased her arm onto my pillow. She sighed contentedly, hugging the pillow, and fell into a deeper slumber. I fought the urge to pat her shoulder or to kiss her on the cheek: she was like a little girl that needed my care when she looked like this, but I didn't wish to disturb her sleep; she needed the rest.

I went to the door and opened it, but I didn't see anything. Huh. I must have imagined it, and was closing the door when I heard it again, this time a definite call:

"_-_-_"

"Yes? Is somebody there?" I opened the door and peered out.

Nothing. Nothing but the snow on the ground, a very light breeze, the trees, the sky and the stars. The crescent moon cast stark shadows everywhere, and the forest outside was surprisingly bright in its light.

I looked around. Still nothing, but I couldn't see around the sides of the house. I could manage a quick peek. I hopped out in my bare feet into the snow to look around the corner of the house.

"Bella."

Huh? Where did that whisper come from?

"Um, hello?" My voice quavered. The whisper didn't sound like anything I had heard before. It wasn't a voice, but I could hear it. What was it?

"Bella," it called again, sighing, "I've missed you. Come back."

It seemed to be coming from the forest ahead of me? I stepped a few feet farther into the snow.

"Come back where? Who are you?" I called. I didn't know where to direct my voice.

"Bella."

The call came from all around me now. The wind caressed my cheeks. The snow went past my ankles. Neither felt cold.

"What do you want?" I called out, looking for something or someone to talk to.

"Why did you let Rosalie take you from me, Bella? Why did you leave me? You were about to lie in my embrace, I would have wrapped you in my white blanket ... I would have held you forever, Bella. Forever and ever. Come back to me."

Oh, my God. Oh, my God! Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! Why do I have to have all these crazy, stupid dreams? This had better be a dream! This had better be a God-damned stupid dream, and I had better wake up, right now.

I stood, fuming, waiting for the dream to go away.

It didn't.

I couldn't stand it anymore. "Rosalie took me away because I was going to die! Rosalie _saved_ me from _you!"_

"Bella." It sighed, eternally patient, "You're born; you live; you die. It is what life _is._ It is what _I am_. _I_ would hold you forever; Rosalie will not. Come away from her, Bella. Come home. With me, you would be part of life; Rosalie is Death's Harbinger."

"_NO! She is NOT!"_ I screamed, _"she's saved my life over and over again."_

"What does she do every time she steps out that door, Bella?" The sound seemed to be smiling.

That was obvious. "She has to take care of me, she gets things for me." I had that voice on that one.

"Like trees?" My 'seat' materialized in front of me, the embedded cross bleeding sap.

"Like soup?" An antelope walked out from the forest, looking at me dolefully.

"Like blood?" It was Dolly, still wearing her saddle. Her voice was higher pitched than I thought she would have had.

"Like blood? Like blood? likeblood? likeblood? likeblood? likebloodlikebloodlikeblood?" Hundreds of animals, too many to count, materialized from the forest, forming a circle around me, accusing me with their chorused question.

"Like death?" A wolf stepped out into the sudden silence.

"Like death?" A man in a tailored business suit stood by the wolf, his dark hair perfectly coiffed.

"Like death?" Several other young men and two police officers joined him, looking at me dispassionately. One of the police officers volunteered: "I had a wife and four children when I died at her hands."

I wanted to explain; I wanted to justify; I wanted to scream. But before I could do anything, the voice asked me, "What do you _taste like,_ Bella?"

"What?" Why was everything in a whirl?

"She told me I tasted like dung," Dolly looked hurt.

The antelope added, "I smelt and tasted like vomit to her."

"What about you, Bella?" the voice whispered. "Ask her what you would taste like."

"She already told me," I replied, not seeing where this was going.

"No, she told you you would taste better that your dream, but she didn't tell you _what_ you would taste like. Is that because your strawberry scented hair and your creamy white skin would be too tantalizing for her to describe? What of your deep, luscious chocolate brown eyes? Hm, vomit and dung or strawberries and cream with chocolate sauce. Which one would you choose, Bella? Which one will she? Day after day, with your blush heating your blood to perfection? Ask her, Bella." The sighing seemed supremely confident.

But it was wrong. "She said she doesn't drink human blood."

It ignored me: "Or better yet, let her tell you. Block the door one day, and as she breathes in to ask you what you are doing, cut yourself. Cut yourself deeply. See how long she lasts before she takes you. Will she even last as long as a half a second?" It laughed an easy laugh.

"No!" Both Dolly and the antelope shouted. "Bella," Dolly begged, "don't do that. Your pain by the stove was nothing to what I felt as she sucked me dry. Don't do that!"

"You know," the sighing pushed past Dolly's objection, "vampires like to keep their victims heart beating as long as possible. Living, racing, pulsating blood tastes so much sweeter. Rosalie is a vampire, Bella. All she does is take, and gives nothing in return. Soon she will take you." The sighing sang softer than the wind.

All the accusers faded, their eyes testifying to me the truth of the words spoken to me. Only the forest and the bed of snow remained, watching me stand alone. The stars above twinkled, not a care in the world troubling them.

"That's not true." I whispered. It _wasn't_ true. She _isn't like that._ She is kind. _She is kind._ The voice was wrong.

"Does she love you, Bella?" It sighed.

"What?" I asked.

"I love you, Bella." It whispered.

"_I don't even know what you are! You can't love me, and I DON'T LOVE YOU! I HATE YOU!"_ I screamed with all my might.

"I loved you, Bella"" Dolly rematerialized and looked at me sadly. "To you I was just a dumb brute, but you cared for me, covered me with blankets against the winter cold, shoed my feet. You fed and watered me. You were a good mistress to me, and I loved you. Is Rosalie a good mistress to you, Bella? Does she cover you against the winter cold?"

"Yes," I replied. She always wrapped me in blankets and kept the fire going. Dolly eyed the tee shirt and panties I was wearing without comment.

"Does she shoe you, too, Bella?" I looked down at my bare feet and wished the snow was higher to hide them from Dolly's reproachful look.

"Does she feed and water you?" Dolly asked.

"She _didn't know! She didn't know!"_ I cut in angrily, "Now she does!"

"And now that she does, will it make one bit of difference?" Dolly asked.

"_YES!"_ I shouted. She _would _take care of me. I just knew it. She _would._

"Hm, yes, of course. Of course she will, Bella. Of course she will." Everything in Dolly's tone said she didn't believe it, but that she was humoring her poor blinded human mistress who was kind to her.

"But, Bella, were you planning to kill me? Did you pull me away to toy with me and then destroy me? No. I was a dumb brute to you, but you were kind to me, and you cared for me, and would have continued to care for me. You didn't think ill of me; I wasn't one troublesome problem to be dealt with ... what does Rosalie think of you?"

"I ..." but before I could respond, Dolly looked off into the forest. My eyes followed hers, and in the distance night became day. I saw the column of white snow flame descend on a girl on her hands and knees, feebly pawing at a sweater. My Rosalie, my angel, was looking at the girl.

"Look at what she's thinking, Bella." Dolly murmured with a kind tone in her voice.

I didn't need the prompting, I saw it written across the Sun that was Rosalie's face: _Stupid human!_

The image faded, leaving the darkness of the night, illuminated only by the moon.

"You didn't think of me that way, Bella. You didn't treat me like the way you are now being treated. You were a kind mistress. I loved you, Bella, but Rosalie killed me, and now I am dead and cannot love you anymore. Bella. I am so sorry." And then the life left her eyes. She fell to the earth and began to fade away, the last I saw of her were her eyes, glazing over, sadly staring into mine.

"Dolly..." I choked. Two tears spilled out of my eyes.

"Rosalie doesn't love you, Bella; she will never love you. She doesn't even call you by name. I call you by name, and I love you, Bella. Her way is only death and pain, pain and death. Come to me, Bella: I will comfort you and give you rest." The sighing sound gently resumed its ever-patient mantra.

"No." I said, shaking, "No. Rosalie saved me from you. I was screaming from _your_ pain. _She_ brought me back to life. _She_ saved me. _You_ were killing me. _Not her."_

"No, Bella," the softest of whispers responded without an edge, "In whose arms were you screaming? Mine? I took away your pain. I took away your cares. I gave you rest. But in whose arms were you screaming? In whose arms was Dolly screaming? In whose arms was Dolly dying? In the very same arms you found yourself in agony, Bella. Come free yourself from her, Bella. Come back to me."

"No." I said. I had had enough of this voice and its lies. I turned around to go back into the cabin.

It wasn't there.

"Let me go back to Rosalie." I stated as calmly as my fury allowed.

"No, Bella. Her way leads only to death, if you're lucky. I will not allow her to take you from the world in which you belong."

"What do you mean!"

"Ask her, Bella. Ask Rosalie. Ask her what fate is worse than death. You will be happy in my arms, Bella. You were happy. And you can be happy again. Come back. Can you be happy with her? Ask her if she's happy. Ask her if you would be happy if you stayed with her. But you won't ask, Bella, will you? You already know the answers. Stay. Stay with me. Stay here forever and ever, and be happy again."

"No!" I shouted.

"Stay." It sighed, contentedly, as if it had already won, as if I was already imprisoned in its non-embrace.

I began screaming: _"NO! ROSAL..." _but the wind swirled, carrying the snow, and it went down my opened mouth, searing it and my throat in agony.

"Stay." It sighed peacefully.

I screamed and screamed, and the burning pain increased, and my screams gurgled with some liquid filling my throat and lungs. I tasted salt and iron on my tongue. I began coughing, and I couldn't stop coughing and screaming and gurgling. My lungs began ripping themselves apart, and my ribs couldn't contain my insides anymore. I fell to the ground, convulsing, and roots from the surrounding trees whipped around my body, ensnaring me and then they began to crush me.

"I will never let you go, Bella. I love you, forever and ever," I heard as I was pulled into the ground. I screamed Rosalie's name, coughing, and I felt a rattle shake my insides apart; the binding roots tightening about me, the only things holding me together, the only things preventing me from taking that last life-giving breath of air.

...

I woke choking and coughing and sweating, the roots from the trees turned out to be the sheet twisted around my body, wrapped between and around my legs, encircling my throat.

My throat.

I coughed again, but this time, besides the raw pain I felt in my throat, my right temple exploded in a lightning bolt of pain so intense I almost lost consciousness. I wished I had, the coughing brought on aftershocks of tiny closed-mouth coughs that hurt my throat less, but my head ... oh! my head! I whimpered, and that didn't hurt ... more. The pain centered just inside my right temple, just above my eye. It taunted me. I coughed again, and it exploded out from just mere pain to white agony. I couldn't think through the pain. I whipped my hand to my temple and pressed there, not to reduce the pain, but just to keep my head together. I very gingerly tried to raise my head, but another cough dropped me back onto the pillow writhing and moaning, my right hand sandwiched between the pillow and my temple.

Stop the — _ow, it hurts so much!_ — coughing. I have to stop the coughing. I reached with my left hand to the floor by the bed seeking the water. Couldn't find it. I leaned over a bit, my hand seeking a bit farther from the bed.

I coughed.

_Agony!_

I landed on the floor in a heap coughing and crying and mewing in pain. The coughing didn't stop. It didn't stop. It didn't stop. _Oh! the pain!_

I curled up into a fetal position. Mistake. The sheet tightened as I did, and I realized that I was strangling myself, but I couldn't stop it: the coughing had me spasming, my right hand was trying to press my right temple into my skull, and my left arm was tucked into my chest. My left hand was squeezing the flesh there: it had a mind of its own. I don't know if it wanted to rip off pieces of me, to provide some other pain so as to take away my thoughts of the agony emanating from my skull, or if were trying to reconnect, to remerge, to reassure my body that it would make it.

I didn't know if I would. I coughed and hacked and spasmed. I was reduced to a quivering, whimpering, coughing mess.

Where was Rosalie? She didn't save me in that horrid dream; she's not saving me now. Was that no-thing right? Was Dolly's sorrow justified? No. She would save me. She always saved me. My vision started to tunnel, the periphery browning, then blacking, out. _Help me, Rosalie, please!_

I choked ... one last breath: "Ro ..." and, as everything went black, I heard the call coming from outside:

"_-_-_"

... calling to me. Compelling me. I didn't want to go outside. I didn't want to be held forever by whatever it was. _Rosalie, please!_ was my last thought, and then: nothing.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

This story proceeds along three alternative paths from here. The story, continues, of course, in the next chapter.

Or.

Or it doesn't, and it ends at the alternate history told by Rosalie in my story "Reminiscence."

Or it is echoed, very slightly, in a ripple of thought and concern in Jocelyn Torrent's story "Rose Read," ch 10 ("Fragile").

In all three alternatives (here (and told from Rosalie's perspective in "Rose by a Lemon Tree"), Reminiscence and Rose Read, ch 10), Rosalie sees our girl's end. What she does with what she sees is very different in each of the tellings. Very different, but, as she is Rosalie, very Rosalie.

So explore the possibilities ... or not ... Or ask Rosalie the question ... the captive was this close. This close. And she's doing what because of this knowledge?

Good thing this is just fiction, eh? For we could _never_ lose someone we love just like that ... for we could _never_ be taken away from the ones we love just like that ...

Yeah. Good thing this is just fiction.

Not that, _ahem,_ I'm stating a position here about any feelings any characters may or may not have for any other character in this story ...


	23. Rosalie Needs a Guy Like Me

**Chapter summary: **You know, Rosalie's all, like, ya know, _Rosalie_, but she's really nice once you get to know her. What she _needs_ is a guy to laugh with her instead of fight with her. A guy like me. That is, if I were a guy. _Man! _Her voice sure tastes good!

* * *

I woke totally disoriented, the only thing certain I knew was that I was lying down in bed and that Rosalie was on top of me. My head was tilted back, and I was captured in her embrace. Her cold lips were pressed to mine, her scent was on my tongue, and her cold air was inflating my lungs. _This_ was a much better dream.

I opened my eyes to find black ones regarding mine. Then I realized I wasn't dreaming; I couldn't have dreamed those eyes so perfectly.

Those perfect eyes were hungry.

I didn't care. I was the happiest girl in the world. _Rosalie had saved me!_ And if the price of saving me was me, then I would gladly pay it. I felt like Nathan Hale: I'd regret only being able to give just one life of mine to her. Anything other than that monstrous, hateful, irresistible call of my last dream. No. Not anything. Rosalie. Just Rosalie. My savior. Again.

I would be willing to pay any price, dream any nightmare, die any death to be revived like this. Well, if I could skip the nightmares and dying parts, that would be fine with me, too.

_"Rosalie!" _I breathed past her lips pushed to mine. I now knew what her signing of her lips and mine meant from before, it wasn't a kiss ... it wasn't _just_ a kiss ... it was the kiss of life. Rosalie wasn't Death; Rosalie was giving me life. Rosalie was Life. Rosalie was _my_ life. I wrapped my arms around her. I wanted hold her and show that no-thing what forever really meant in that hug.

At the sound of my voice, Rosalie disengaged herself from me and raced to the other side of the cabin.

That hurt.

I couldn't stand the distance between us now. I propped myself up one elbow, looking at her imploringly.

"Rosalie, it's okay; I don't care! You can take me. Take my blood. You don't have to drink that dung and vomit anymore! You saved me. You can ..."

Rosalie cut me off. She was shaking her head rapidly from side to side, pressing herself against the wall. She looked trapped, cornered, ... hunted. By me. That thought would have been hilarious if it didn't hurt so much.

Was I aware what I was doing? Yes. I was offering myself to her. I was willing to die for her right now — that is, I was telling her to kill me. I knew this. Would I have any regrets? No. Not one. I was already dead to the rest of the world: missing persons were never found, and we were hidden extraordinarily well, I was sure of that, so my entire world was here. I could either give myself to that thing of the dream or to Rosalie. The choice was obvious. Perhaps, as she took me, I would have time to tell her just one thing, even through the pain. But perhaps I wouldn't have time, but that didn't matter right now. What mattered was that Rosalie had saved me — saved my life and saved me from that dream, and right now, saving me from that dream was oh! so much sweeter than the relatively minor fact that she had also saved my life yet again — my heart overflowed with joy and gratitude.

"No! Rosalie, listen!" I began, but that's as far as I got.

Stupid me. Remember the girl who needed to whisper past the inflamed throat? That should have been me. It wasn't. The one who was coughing, pressing her hand to her temple and writhing in agony on top of the bed? Three guesses which girl that was right now. Hint: it wasn't Rosalie.

So Rosalie moved from her position and _did_ come back, and Rosalie _did_ hold me, lifting me into a sitting position and propping me up, but the wracking pain — _everywhere!_ — reduced my victory quite a bit. And her head was pressed against my left temple, not my right. That didn't help much with the pain exploding behind my eyes so powerfully that stars actually obscured a good part of my vision.

_"Make it go away. Oh! please! make it go away. It hurts so much. Please. Oh! It hurts!"_ I was completely reduced to uttering senseless interjections.

Rosalie held me tightly through my convulsions and my coughing fit. Her teeth could have very easily sunk into my neck or my shoulder. They didn't.

Of course, she wasn't breathing.

Although I thought that it would never happen, the coughing eventually subsided. The pain did, too. A little bit. It didn't throb. It just sat there, behind my temple, behind my eyes; waiting. Waiting to pounce again.

She held me. I whimpered, then drew a careful breath.

"Ouch?" I said. I was going for funny. My comment wasn't funny, however. It was pitiful, but I was much worse. Much, much worse.

I regretted that she hadn't taken me. The pain I was experiencing now was due to an ill-equiped and poorly prepared trip to the outhouse ... well, _toward_ the outhouse. That's a nice headline: "Girl dies looking for potty!" At least the pain from her would serve some purpose, at least the pain _would be_ from _her. _I could take comfort in suffering if I knew it was _for_ Rosalie, and it was _because_ _of_ Rosalie. That would give the pain some meaning for me. Pain from and for Rosalie would have worth and value, and I would gladly pay that price now. That horrible, wretched, _awful!_ dream had showed me that much.

Rosalie eventually pulled back, still holding me, but at arm's length. She examined my face, opening her mouth wide and pointing toward mine. I obliged. She looked inside and frowned. I would frown, too, looking down my throat. I could tell I was a mess from the back of my mouth all the way down to my stomach from that tickly, prickly, scratchy, painful feeling just pulsating there. I bet I looked awfully red in there. Red as blood.

She made sure I was secure in my sitting position and pulled out a tee from the dwindling supply and returned to me. I felt the tee I was wearing; surreptitiously, I hoped. It was soaked through. I noticed it reeked of sweat. Ugh! What a sight I must be! She held up one finger in front of my face. What did that mean? Wait? Wait for what? One? One what? One tee? I couldn't guess.

She put both hands at the neckline of the tee I was wearing, and shifted her hands to my right shoulder. Suddenly, the tee was ripped from that point on my neckline all the way down the right sleeve. She repeated the process for the left side, and then she grabbed the neckline right in front of me.

_Rip_ when the tee, and I was fully exposed to her. She had me entirely compromised. All I could do was look into her eyes and trust myself to her completely. I was, after all, willing to hand my life over to her. I had just made that offer a minute ago. This was something less than that, I reasoned, wasn't it? But I was also handing her my trust and my virtue, so I knew it was also something much more than just my life.

Her hand reached behind my neck, leaning my head forward onto her shoulder, almost hugging me. The movement felt businesslike — not really impersonal, but also not aggressive — but I wondered briefly, at that moment, what she would do. I felt the pull of wet cloth over my skin as she removed the rag which was my old tee and heard a slight wet _thump_ from near the stove. A fresh tee was over my head the very next instant as my head came to rest against the wall where the bed rested. I pushed my arms through the sleeves and breathed in the smell of fresh, clean tee. And of stinky, sweaty Bella. Oh, well, at least the tee was clean.

I looked over to the stove. There was quite the collection of rags there. I recognized shreds of what used to be the bed sheet. Moral of the story: don't strangle Bella unless you wish to be shredded by Rosalie. I had my very own personal — vindictive — guardian vampire.

_You hear that, you stupid dream?_

She felt my panties between my legs, and I jumped a bit at that. But then I realized she was checking my pad. _A little warning would have been nice ..._ But how to convey that non-verbally? Touch her own crotch and the point at me? The interpretations on that, just after stripping me of my tee, ... um, yeah, well. She pointed toward the door and raised her eyebrow.

"Um, no, I'm fine. I don't need to go now." My voice, even as a whisper, sounded so out of place in the otherwise silent cabin.

I hated my period. I hated it. It rendered her mute, and I so wanted to hear her voice. I didn't care anymore if it involved hours of verbal fencing. She had just saved me, again. Was it after midnight? So did this count on yesterday's tally, or did we start a new one each day? You know what kind of tally I'm talking about, right? The "Number of times Rosalie's saved Bella" tally.

I wanted to hear what my vampire kidnapper savior thought and felt in her own words, from her own musical voice. I wanted to hear her angry shouts and listen to her condescension and deal with her bossy orders and ...

Well, okay, maybe I didn't want to hear so much of those things ...

But I also remembered her gaily dancing about me in the forest singing of her freedom and her excited tumult of words at the idea of inviting me for supper. When she was happy, the whole world was blown away by her happiness. And I wanted to feel that confusing euphoria again.

Hey, wait a minute! Vampires don't eat supper. She had invited me _as_ dinner at the Hale residence. _That little sneak!_

Well, I still liked her, even though she had wanted me for supper back then. Besides, dinner was on me tonight anyway. _Har, har!_

While I was thinking these thoughts, Rosalie unceremoniously ripped my panties along with the pad right off my ... well, you know. _"HEY!" _I screeched.

When would I ever learn? I was wracked by a fresh round of coughs, and Rosalie held me, thankfully after flicking the soaking wet panties and rather full pad onto the rag pile. As I suffered through the new round of agony, I couldn't help but think that she was holding me together through my spasm with nothing between us except my tee and her clothes.

Her denim pants were rather abrasive. We would have to get rid of those for the next spasm.

Um, nevermind that last thought? I didn't mean it _that way, _and please don't tell Rosalie, okay?

Incidentally, it is amazing what you can think through an agonizing bout of pain ... that's right: I blame the spasms, and I'll swear to that in court, too, if you press charges.

When the coughs subsided, Rosalie extracted a new pad and panties, and I grumbled a "warn a girl next time!" in her direction. She ignored me. This forcefully reminded me that although she was always saving me, she wasn't particularly _nice_ about it. Well, that's something we could work on, her bedside manner. She wanted to learn something about herself, well, then, there was a little nugget. Always good to have a self-improvement project going. Mine was improving Rosalie. I had a to-do list (item #1: bedside manner). Her self-improvement project was to clear items off the to-do list.

What? _I_ think it's a great idea.

I hope she was done with her fussing over me.

Nope. But the worst _had_ to be over, right? She tucked me under the blanket, stoked the fire with a couple of logs, and then started loading the rags into the fire. She laid the pad aside, however. Ewww. I wondered why, but then, thinking about my blood on there and her being a vampire, I kind of blocked all lines of inquiry in that direction. Taking blood from my neck was one thing, but ...

I wasn't going to go there. Still amn't.

She extinguished all the candles in the cabin ... all two of them, so then I couldn't see anything at all. But I heard a sound of liquid being poured into a cup. Rosalie sat beside me on the bed, and handed me the cup. I sniffed it tentatively. It smelled sweet.

"What's this?" I ask warily.

She lifted the cup, and my attached hand, incidentally, to my lips. _Well, okay, then, _I tilted the cup, but Rosalie stopped me and tilted it for me, much more slowly. Liquid trickled into my mouth.

_Wow! What was __that__?_ It was slightly more viscous than water. Its strongest taste was that of honey. That was a very strong taste, but was followed by a subtle licorice taste and — what was that spice you used on eggnog for Christmas? Not cinnamon, but the other one? Yeah, that one — whatever you call it.

But then it coated my tongue and stung it, and my tongue went numb in my mouth.

And then it went down my throat like molten lava, coating my throat, and my throat went numb.

"Wow!" I exclaimed. Where had I tasted this before? I hadn't. But what was familiar about it? I thought about that, but drew a blank.

I took a larger sip, and Rosalie took the cup away from me.

"Hey!" I exclaimed. I'm a walking exclamation point!

She handed me a different cup. I sniffed. Nothing. I touched my tongue in the liquid. It ... tasted like water, I guess ... I took a gulp. Water. I drank about half the cup when Rosalie switched cups on me again. I sniffed. It was the honey drink.

While I was drinking the water, I noticed my cheeks were starting to get numb. I paid that no mind, and took a big gulp from the cup I had in hand. That was okay.

Until I swallowed it.

_FIRE!_

My eyes teared up, and Rosalie rescued the cup from my hand that was going to pound it down onto the bed. My other hand balled into a fist, and it was repeatedly hammering on the bed, and I was saying things I'd rather not see printed.

I couldn't see it, but I could almost feel the smile coming from Rosalie. She handed me the cup, again. I took a very, very small sip.

It was water.

_That little cheater!_ Man, I was going to get her for this. Handing me water, like that, pretending it was that potent honey drink. What was she thinking? I took a few pulls, and finished off the water.

"Hey!" _What did I tell you about my exclamations?_ "I can't feel my cheeks!"

It was the neatest thing. I raised my hand to the cheeks in question and touched them. Nothing. I pressed hard. Still nothing. I tapped them with my open palm.

A whole lotta nothing going on.

So I smacked myself really hard. Nothing. I went to try that again when a cold hand grabbed my wrist, pulling it down to my side.

So I tried the other hand, hard, on the other cheek. Another cold hand grabbed that hand, forcing it down.

_"Jeez! _What's your problem, Rosalie? I _like _the taste of your voice. Gimme some more, huh?" I had identified the drink. Honey? Stinging? She had somehow distilled the very essence of her voice and poured it into a cup for me to drink. The taste on my tongue when she revived me should have been an obvious cue. In retrospect, I couldn't believed I missed it.

_That's why_ she wasn't talking so much these days. I got her all figured out now. I tell you what! But how come my voice didn't sound all pretty like hers does? I pouted.

I saw her look at the cup and then look at me. I could just imagine that silly quizzical look she got on her face. I started giggling.

"You know what your problem is, Rosalie?" I didn't wait for an answer ... unless she was handing me that cup.

... Nope. Oh, well.

"You're like everybody, but in reverse, you know? You're all like, _'Ooh! I'm bad; I'm scary; I'm mean.' _ But you're like really nice, ya know? And you just don't want anybody to know that. Yeah, but everybody's like: _'I've got a sense of humor!'_ But they really don't. See, you're really funny, but you're like: _'Oh! I'm not funny!'_ And all that. That's what your problem is Rosalie. Uh-huh. Yeah. You've got to take some time off and smell the ... well ... smell the roses, geddit? Am I right, or am I right?"

She didn't respond; she was being, like, all that.

"'Course I'm right. Now, get off those stupid jeans and put on some PJs, you need a good night's rest."

She didn't move, she just looked at me.

"C'mon! It's hotter'n Hell in here after you stoked that already blazing fire. I need to cool down, and you need a break, so get moving there, Miss Bossy-pants, chop-chop!" Sometimes she just needed to be told what to do for her own good. She needed, like, a manager, or something.

She still wasn't paying attention. Gah! Did I need to do everything myself? I uncovered myself and hopped out of bed to get some more PJs, but then the room twisted hard to the left, and I overcompensated. I was on a crash course to giving a big bear hug to the stove. Hm, this is going to hurt.

Rosalie grabbed me, of course.

"What's with you! I can walk across the room if it's not moving all over the place!"

She started bringing me back to the bed. "Nothing doing: I'm getting your PJs!" What was so hard to understand about that? She set me on the bed, anyway, holding out her hand. "PJs." I reminded her. She nodded. Good! I didn't want to get rough with her. My head hit the pillow and my feet flew up and landed on the bed. I did all that without practicing. Yup, I'm that good.

Rosalie sat on the bed. I checked her legs. Cotton, not denim. Good. I pulled on her arm. No movement. I tugged again. Nothing. Boy, was she dense!

"You don't rest by sitting on a bed, Rosalie, and I don't get cooler with a fire turning this place into a sauna. Now, lie down!"

She did lie down on her back — _get the lady a diploma!_ — arms stiffly held to her sides. What about the word "relax" was so difficult a concept for her to grasp?

"Arm," I commanded, "please?" I added as an afterthought. Couldn't hurt too much to be nice. I hadn't coughed this whole time, and my throat did feel much better.

She extended her arm, and I grabbed it, wrapping it under my neck. _Very nice!_ I nuzzled my head into her armpit. My feet were moving up and down her leg, moving the soft cotton out of the way so they could rub against the cool marble of her calves. Blessed, blessed coolness! I rested my right temple against her chest and felt the coolness of her bosom bleed through her shirt and into the heat and pain centralized behind my temple. Thankfully, she wasn't wearing a brassiere under her PJ top; that would have blocked the delicious cold too much.

"Ahhhhh!" I would have liked to rip off her shirt to apply more concentrated coolness to my aching head, but I think she would've taken that the wrong way.

What? She ripped off my shirt ... _and my panties, fer crying out loud!_ ... I had a valid medical reason, but I wasn't getting all _'let's rend some clothes!_' like she had.

But then she shifted away. _"Hey! Quit squirming!"_ I had worked really hard to get her all comfy and me, too, and she had go and do this? I rearranged myself so that I was on my side, facing her, and my right temple rested on the part of her chest near where her upper arm joined the shoulder. You can look up that body part. I locked her into place by draping my left arm over her rib cage. No more squirming away for her. Nosiree.

The coolness felt very, very nice in this little inferno hut.

"Whew, thanks. This feels very good!" I rubbed my whole body against hers in appreciation, the soles of my feet rubbed up and down her calves, sucking all the coolness they could from her. Bliss!

I started to drift off, drinking in the scent that, if anything, smelt _better_ than the distillation of her voice, but then a thought occurred to me.

"That guy you were supposed to marry, whatizname? Ronald? No. Roy, right? Roy King? I bet he was a wiry guy like Edward, right?" She looked at me. I had my eyes closed, but I could feel her head turn.

"What a stupid name! _'Hey, my name's Roy King.'_ Fer crying out loud, 'Roy' _means_ 'King'! How dumb can you get? And he was 'the Second'? He's a second fiddle King-King? _Jeez!"_

"See, but that's your problem, right? I bet your parents hooked you up with bad-ole Roy, right? Am I right? And Dr. Hale, he hooked you up with Edward, right? You and Edward! That's a train wreck waiting to happen! He's all proud and serious and intellectual, and you're all proud and serious and intellectual, right? I bet you two were like two cats in a bag, right? Am I right, or am I right?"

I couldn't see in the dark, so I reached up my left hand to feel her lips. "Yup." I said. Her lips were smiling. I was right. Of course I was right! I returned my arm to her rib cage, but either my arm was too heavy now or her, okay, her breasts, okay? her breasts, fer crying out loud! were bigger than I thought, so my arm, like, accidentally brushed against them. But I didn't try to make a big deal out of it, okay? _So sue me already!_

Incidentally to nothing, if she's perfect, is there, like, a word that means more perfect than that? Just wondering _fer_ _no reason whatsoever and thanks fer not even ASKING!_

"See, that's the problem. You got other people hooking you up on their agendas. But you are actually in serious need of a guy ... okay, now hear me out first, Rosalie, before you get all, you know, _Rosalie_ on me. You don't need a Roy guy or an Edward guy. Those guys are like, you know, total jerks for you. Hmmmmm."

I breathed in her scent. It was concentrated heaven. I might have drifted off for a second there, but I was onto something.

"No, you need like a guy, well, a vamp guy, K? A guy who can clear a bar if some other guy looks at you funny, you know?"

"But not a tough guy guy guy guy guy. Whoa there! No you need a guy, like, sweet on you, so when you get all, like, _Rosalie_ on him or anybody else, he'll be like, _'Aw, ain't she cute!'_ instead of like all, like, Edward on you, you know?"

"I got it! You need a big-ole teddy bear of a guy! Have I totally figured it out, or what? Right? You need a big strong guy you can lean on when you want to, but won't get all in your hair when you need the space, you know? You know, someone who'll laugh at your jokes, but he has to be smart and attentive enough to recognize you're joking and not being all, like, _Rosalie_. You know, like a guy who gets you like I get you, right? A guy who sees that you're really nice, like I see you're really nice? A guy who thinks you're the most beautiful person in the world, but like still has a brain, but isn't a jerk about it, and manages to keep the drool in his mouth, right? Or who maybe can't when you want to, like, you know, ... well, nevermind. That's the kind of guy I'm talking about, right? You know, like a big, hulking, manly teddy bear version of me, see?"

I finally got how to make her happy!

"And who better to hook you up this time? Definitely not you! Sorry, but you just pick the wrong guys: pretty, persnickety boys, right? All catty, you know: the ones who would be gay if they weren't, right? Like you are sometimes. _Jeez!_ You can be so sensitive sometimes, Rosalie, really! I mean, c'mon! Yeah, so, nah, you shouldn't pick the guy; you need somebody to hook you up who knows you and who knows what's best for you. Somebody who doesn't have a 'marry my son' hidden agenda, right? That'd be me! Am I right? _ No, you know I'm right!"_ She winced a bit at my last declaration — Gosh! What? Like, are her ears, like, made out of, I don't know, _sensitive stuff_ or something? — but my epiphany was obvious. This was such a no-brainer!

"Don't you worry about a thing, Rosalie; I got this one. I'll hook you up!"

I had done my good deed for the day. Moreover, I had a really good juicy project on which to work. I was so pleased! I breathed in her scent and nuzzled her companionably and fell straight into a contented sleep, safely wrapping and wrapped in the arms of my guardian vampire.

* * *

**A/N:** Emmett as a male version of Bella? An obvious conclusion in light of this chapter, as Rosalie and Edward are of a piece. And, as Bella says here, _incidentally to nothing_ my admiration of Emmett is boundless. He is the strongest character in the _Twilight_ series, but I'm not talking about physical strength. That he is constantly untroubled by Rosalie, that he actually enjoys her company, that he delights in her tantrums and hissy fits? That he lets her be her all the while not being stepped on by her or hiding behind or under her skirt?

You know that Emmett is as smart as all the other Cullens and Hales. How come you never hear about it? It's because he doesn't measure his worth by his intellect. If I was one tenth the man Emmett is, I'd be twice the man I am now. I think the world _needs_ more big tough teddy bear guys that like to laugh and only have eyes for their own girl.

But that's just me.

If you're gonna get all, like, ya know, _Rosalie_ on me for this note, please send flames to /dev/null. kthxbai!


	24. Rain by a Rose Garden

**Chapter summary:** Sheriff Swan and Bella stop by the Hale residence on their tour of Carter county and ... wait ... what? _Oh, God, please! Please_ just let the morning come! I don't want to die again; not for the third time today!

* * *

Pa and I were riding back from the courthouse, but we decided to stop by the Hale residence to see how the newcomers were coming along.

They were coming along very well. Of course the horses became more skittish the closer we got the their property line, but we had learned to expect that reaction by now. They were good horses for us, so there was no sense getting into a fight with them every single time we passed by the Hales. Pa volunteered to watch the horses at the property line this time so I could say our hellos. Besides, he wasn't comfortable much in social settings, and even though we knew the Hales well enough for the short time they've been here — which basically meant not at all except for some superficialities — even just a hello was a stretch for Pa. Me, I could say hello to anybody, as long as it was just hello and not the excruciatingly boring do-si-do of the exchange of town gossip and what-have-you.

Besides, the Hales weren't much ones to be gossipy. Now, as to being the _subject_ of gossip; that was another matter entirely ... word even reached me. That, in itself, was something to headline in the newspaper here. If we had one.

Myself, I thought it was rather mean-spirited of the folk around here. But what could you expect from Country, anyway? People weren't hostile, but most were of the mind that if you weren't born here, or weren't one of the original settlers, you didn't belong here. How would folk expect the town to grow if newcomers weren't welcomed, I wondered. But what did I know? I was just the sheriff's daughter, so the only reason my jaw should move was to say how good Mrs. Swanson's fish tasted at the Friday fish fries. And for some folk, that was too much talk from me already. I should just provide the corn bread and sit and eat my food in silence.

Such views were never brought up in front of Pa, of course. He tended to be _just a mite_ protective and possessive when it came to his daughter.

When it came to the Hales, folk couldn't really speak out against the them, either, but for entirely different reasons: _Dr. Hale_ elevated his family status to near that of the first family, his rôle being as, if not _more,_ important that Pa's. And Mrs. Hale's industry with the needle had doubled the aid to families in need of cloth and clothes both near and far. She donated the clothes anonymously at the rectory, but there are really no secrets in Ekalaka. _I_ felt she should monogram each of her donations, so people would see what an asset to the community the Hales were. But this was not something I could even hint at; it wasn't my place to put anyone forward ... _I_ certainly wouldn't want any attention for myself, and for me to suggest something like that to the Hales, a very private family, would probably put them on the spot. I always found it best to avoid embarrassing situations: calling things out always made the situation worse in my experience, and besides, the Hales weren't _maltreated_ here, to be sure.

I dismounted and handed Pa the reins, but turned back for one second to pat Dolly on the neck ... somehow this seemed important for me to do. Dolly paid me no mind, however, bending instantly to chew at the grass around her bit.

She was a good, steady horse. I gave her one more pat, and when I did, I wanted to cry — an inexplicable and impossibly strong feeling of affection for her washed over me in a wave — but I just squared my shoulders instead and turned to the Hale residence.

They had done some seriously major improvements to their house and to the surrounding property, it looked like a residence now, and not an abandoned building falling into disrepair. They had done so much to the house, under Mrs. Hale's vigorous direction, that it now looked like house befitting a doctor and his family from Town Back East.

In short, ostentatious for Ekalaka, to be sure, but the Hales seemed not to have problem with money, even during these hard times, and the house fit them.

I walked up on to their porch and raised my hand to knock on their door when the most wonderful smell of flowers nearly knocked me over. If my jaw wasn't attached to my skull, it might've fallen off with the surprise the scent hit me with.

_Had they planted a flower garden?_

Instead of knocking at the door, I figured I'd take a look around back first. It'd be something to talk about other than the usual _how you getting along?_ and _if there's anything you need._ I hopped off the porch and walked around back. I really didn't know if I should saunter nonchalantly or walk quietly. I wasn't really spying on them, I just wanted to see what their latest improvements were, but I also didn't really have their permission to the breath of their property either. I sneaked a peek at Pa. He was watching me from the edge of their property. I gave him a guilty wave that I hoped look off-hand. He waved back easily.

Well, I was helping the sheriff maintain Carter County peace, after all ...

I turned the corner wondering if they really had a flower garden around back or if it was something else.

It was a flower garden. I knew Mrs. Hale didn't like to keep idle, but this?

At least an acre and a half of fully mature, in bloom, trumpet-like flowers of every color greeted my eyes. _They sure like this species!_ The garden was planted in a wild, natural style as opposed to a traditional English garden. That surprised me. Dr. Hale had a trace of a British accent; I figured he would have wanted something more four-square. But when it came to how things were arranged, Mrs. Hale had very decided views, and Dr. Hale seemed more than happy to give her free reign over those matters. I didn't see Mrs. Hale as all that free-form, either, but maybe she was trying something different? A very light breeze wafted the scent toward me: honeysuckle. I stumbled forward a step into the garden, pulled by the scent, before I even realized what I was doing. There was also a very faint sweet-sour smell that was pleasant. I looked around toward the center of the garden and saw two lemon trees, very pretty, in full bloom.

That was a nice contrasting touch. I headed in that direction, curious, being careful about the honeysuckle plants. I didn't wish to break a branch, but it was simply impossible not to brush against them, they were so closely arranged, there must have been hundreds of the plants, easily. The scent from the plants as I passed them was heavenly, and, on several occasions, I was sorely tempted to pick a bunch or two of the trumpet flowers and to taste the nectar, but I didn't. I didn't wish to disturb the beauty of the Hale garden even one little bit, and I also felt, somehow, that it would be almost ... sacrilegious? And the curiosity about what lemon trees were doing in the center of the garden kept me going, even if the wondrous scent just made me want to lie down in the garden, close my eyes and drink it in along with the delicious Sun. The weather couldn't be more perfect for a late Spring day like this.

I wonder if they had picnic tables there ... it would be a perfect place to host a fish-fry, and silence some of the neighbors' grumblings. I smirked at the image of the awed looks coming from the less welcoming residents.

An almost angry buzzing passed by my ear, and I reflexively ducked my head out of the way of a very large honey bee passing by, and then another one followed, close on the first one's, well, not heels, but you know what I mean. They paused to draw the nectar of a shrub a few feet away from me, and I saw they weren't bees; they were hummingbirds. I watched fascinated for a moment — it was simply amazing watching them hover, flit, move in and back out of the trumpet flowers of the honeysuckles. I really wished to sample the nectar again, but then the pull of the mystery at the center of the garden kept me going. The hummingbirds buzzed near me going from shrub to shrub, but then they flew further afield and out of sight.

As I got closer to the lemon trees, I saw there was some kind of white pavilion between them. Now this I really had to see. I picked up my pace and broke through — carefully — the last obstructing shrub to see that the pavilion was made of some kind of canvas and was large: it looked like about ten people could use it as a bivouac for an overnighter.

But then they all wouldn't be able to fit under the pavilion, ... unless they moved that marble temple first.

Or that's what the structure in the middle of the pavilion looked like to me, anyway.

The pavilion wasn't really a pavilion, it was more like a canopy or skirt, encircling the temple, and the temple wasn't all that large; it measured something like ten feet in diameter and looked something like a cupola. Hanging down from the skirt right in front of the temple was a cloth obscuring what I assumed to be a door that let up the the open air dome.

I approached the cloth and touched it ... cotton? How would that last in the elements? And made to push it aside. It turned out hard to move, and I had to hook both hands on one side of the cloth and _heave, _holding the cloth aside as I look past it to, not a door, as I thought, but an opening cut into the side of the temple that created a very narrow ramp up. I would actually have to turn to one side to ascend.

So I did. Curiosity was burning me up: I felt almost a _need_ to see what was up there. My cheek skimmed against the smooth and cool marble, and I realized that I was rather warm from the exertion getting here. The coolness felt very nice against my cheek. It seemed, oddly enough, that the scent of the honeysuckle had embedded itself into the marble. I didn't feel pollen on my cheek, but the scent of it here was very strong, even stronger than in the garden. Strong, sweet, but not at all cloying. Just the opposite in fact. Intermingled with the honeysuckle smell was another very subtle scent that I couldn't identify at first, but as I continued my ascent, the _taste_ of it became stronger.

Rose. It was a rose scent.

I reached the top of the curving ramp. Marble columns supported a gold-leaf dome, and the whole garden of honeysuckle shrubs circled it round. The two lemon trees wafted in a light breeze, and I could see the Hale's house in the distance.

None of this beauty laid before my had my attention, however, because in the very center of the temple grew a rose bush with one single pink rose surrounded by three buds. It was in full bloom and was the largest rose I had ever seen; it was almost as big as my head! One would think a rose so large would appear excessive or obscene. If anyone used those words to describe this flower, they would get more than a few words from me, maybe even excessive words. I had never seen a more beautiful flower than this one: a full flower head with layers upon layers of perfect soft pink petals curving away in waves from the cluster surrounding the central ovary. One would think that it would fall under its own weight, but it stood tall and straight, nearly eye level ... one could almost say that it had a proud posture.

Between me and the rose bush, attached somehow to the dome above, was a gossamer scrim waving very gently in the breeze. I approached it as quietly as I could, walking almost reverently. The rose bush seemed to be sacred: placed in this byzantine-like temple for a reason, and I felt the need to give it reverence. I was right in front of the scrim, which was right in front of the bush, the rose and the buds facing me not even one foot away. The scent: I wanted to stay here forever, inhaling this intoxicating rose scent admixed with the wafting lemon and honeysuckle breeze. Could I have somehow been transported from the Hales' straight to Heaven?

If this wasn't Heaven, and I didn't much care what it was, then I'd have to ask the Hale family if I could be installed here as a caretaker or gardener or rose-watcher or anything at all, just so long as I could stay. But if I were to talk with the Hales, that would mean I would have to leave here, now or sometime, and I didn't want to do that.

What I wanted to do was to touch that rose.

I looked around me, but noone was here, but somehow I felt I had to ask first. Actually, I felt I _wasn't_ supposed to touch the rose, that it would be doing something wrong, somehow, but I really wanted to do just that.

I whispered: "May I touch it?" and waited. Nothing happened, of course, but I felt somehow watched or somehow criminal. But I wasn't going to leave without giving up this opportunity ... maybe the Hales wouldn't let me back here? Maybe this place was for their family only?

Quick as lightning my hand snuck around the scrim, and my fingertips very gently stroked against the outer petals. I felt a couple of drops of dew, and the rose seemed to quiver, either at my touch or from the light breeze. When I reached the base of the flower, I reversed the stroke, and my knuckles brushed against the petals.

"So soft!" I uttered in awe. Soft as a rose petal? I don't know if the words meant this feeling — this feeling that was originating in my fingers and spreading from there through my hand, up my arms and from there diffusing throughout my body — I don't know if _any_ words could be used to describe this feeling. My knuckles reached the top of the rose. I rested my hand very gently on top of it, and let my fingertips sink just ever-so-slightly between the folds of the inner petals. Then I let my fingers gently follow the tips further between the folds of the petals.

"Ah!" I sighed in pure contentment. I have never felt anything like this before.

The rose quivered a bit more in the breeze that had now picked up, and then, suddenly, nectar flowed out of the base of the flower through the petals in a continuously flowing stream. I jerked my hand back. Had I damaged the flower? But as the worry formed in my head, the scent of the nectar hit me, and I _had _to have it. I lost all ability to reason as I launched myself at it to drink that nectar. Drink it and never stop!

But as I leapt, the scrim that I intended to shove aside fell from the dome above, and I was caught up in it, and then I felt myself being dragged away from the rose bush. _What?_ I looked around me to see who was pulling me back, but nobody was, the scrim was now attached to two columns, and I was the pebble in this giant slingshot being relentlessly pulled away from that life-giving nectar.

_"Please..."_ I begged and struggled against the scrim, trying to claw my way around or through it, trying with all my might to return to the rose.

That's when I felt myself flying and falling. I was launched from the scrim between the marble columns — thank God I didn't hit one of them at the speed I was going! — and watched the temple fly away from me as the honeysuckle garden raced toward me at an alarming rate. This was going to hurt, I could tell. I would certainly be scratched by the branches waving in the now strong breeze and then either impaled at the base of one of the shrubs or crushed against the ground. I shut my eyes and rolled myself up into a ball, awaiting the pain.

... that never came. I felt as if I had only jumped onto a feather bed. When I looked I saw the bushes waving beneath me in the wind, and I was carried along, away from the lemon trees. Away from the temple. Away from the rose, and its irresistible nectar.

In a few seconds, I found myself at the edge of the flower garden where I had started my adventure, and the last three bushes bent under my weight and deposited on my feet outside the garden. That is, on my feet until I lost my balance and sat down hard. Thankfully, _not_ on my tail bone, but I would still be feeling this tomorrow. Helping Pa around the county left me less padding back there than some of the girls from Ekalaka had.

This wasn't my concern right now. I leapt up to forge my way right back to that temple, but somehow the breeze had interlocked the branches of the honeysuckle, and I couldn't push through. I raced alongside the perimeter, looking for another avenue, but as I ran, the honeysuckle bushes bent together. I stopped, confounded, then watched in amazement as, right in front of my eyes, more and more branches wove together, fencing me out.

Then the realization hit me with a force that stunned me, and the breath I sucked in swam with honeysuckle, a whiff of lemon and the slightest hint of rose. The garden, the temple, the rose. It was all _my_ Rose. My Rosalie. _My Rose._

"Rose," I cried, hollering into the honeysuckle, aiming my voice toward the lemon trees that I could barely see, and to the temple and Rose that I could not, "I'm sorry! I sorry! I want to be with you!" I pushed against the honeysuckle to no avail, no matter how hard I pushed.

"Rose, _please_, please let me in!" I pushed as hard as I could, with my hands, my arms, and face. I couldn't get in. I pushed. I couldn't get in. I felt tears mingling with the honeysuckle as its comforting scent reminded me of what I could not have, of where I could not be.

"Rose," I shouted, "I... I..." and then I broke and started crying as I finished with a whisper: "I love you."

I leaned against the impenetrable honeysuckle: the honeysuckle that smelled so sweet and that did not scratch my face and arms but instead held my in an embrace that still kept me away. "Rose," I whispered into the honeysuckle, "I love you."

The first drops of rain fell big and fat on my back. I looked up into the sky now swirling with cumulus clouds. I looked back at the inaccessible flower garden, my unassailable Rose, and then dropped my eyes.

"Yeah. Well ..." I turned around, dejected. No, not dejected: _rejected_. An arrow pierced my heart, and it was hard to compose myself as I walked back to Pa. It was hard to want to try. I wondered why I bothered taking the next breath.

"Hey, kiddo, see the Hales 'round back?" Pa asked as I took Dolly's reins.

"Nah," was about all I could manage.

"Guess they're out, seeing that their car's gone," he pointed toward their driveway.

When I looked up to see where he was pointing, Pa looked into my eyes. It wasn't hard for me to guess what he could see.

"Bella, are you okay?" Concern filled his voice, and that concern killed any remaining hope of damming the flood that crashed over me.

"No, Pa, I'm not okay! Okay? _I'M NOT OKAY!"_ I dropped Dolly's reins and wrapped my arms around Pa, crying into his shoulder. He stood stiffly as I cried and tried to explain. "I..." _love her, _I thought as I sobbed, "but ..." _she doesn't l..._ I couldn't say the words to Pa. I couldn't even say the words to myself.

_She doesn't love me._

Pa raised then dropped his arm a couple of times. I guess he couldn't decide whether to hug me or give me a pat on the back. I was the one who had to pull myself together, and I did it as fast as I could for Pa's sake. I sobbed in one more breath, hard, unwrapped myself from him, and wiped my eyes with my shirt sleeve.

Pa looked at me, shifting from foot to foot. Poor Pa!

"Come on, Pa," I said, taking pity on him, "let's ride." I picked up Dolly's reins and mounted the saddle.

Pa looked at me for a second. "All right," he said as he mounted Patches, and we headed off. I kept my head down, just letting Dolly follow Patches at an easy walk.

That's the thing about Pa. He doesn't push it, he doesn't hover, he doesn't worry over you. He tells you a thing once. If you do it his way, fine. If you don't, fine. But he's there when you come to him. He's there one-hundred percent. He'll listen, but he'll let it go. And if you don't want to talk, he won't even think about it. You'll come to him, or not. Either way is fine with Pa.

I wished I was one of the boys in the Great War in the trenches beside Pa. I bet there was nobody better to watch your back. I'd bet you anything on that.

The rain continued to fall, eventually misting. We were thoroughly soaked. I looked up, "Pa, why are we heading out of Ekalaka?"

"We're doing the tour of the county today, remember, Bells?" Pa answered from ahead of me, not turning back to tell me.

All I had wanted to do was to go home and crawl into bed. I did not want to spend the rest of the day in the saddle passing by homesteads that were going to be just fine without our checking in on them anyway ... just like the Hale's.

That stung. "Pa, I'm going to head on home. You'll be okay without me?"

Pa did look back at that. "Well, we can do the tour tomorrow. Hows about I ride home with you now."

Tomorrow was Saturday. This was so Pa. He was off shift that day; Deputy Kimmich on duty then. Pa was going to work an extra day because of me, and it didn't trouble him one bit. I felt bad, looking at him, knowing that I was the cause of his extra day of work, but I didn't have it in me to go on with the tour today, and I didn't have it in me to send him off. "'Kay; thanks Pa." I murmured.

"Sure, no problem." He answered. But it was a problem, but Pa did it anyway. For me. We turned the horses back toward home, but then I had a problem of my own.

"Um, Pa, how far away from home are we?" I asked, keeping the urgency out of my voice.

"Not far; not far. About seven or so miles, I'd say."

_Seven miles?_ I had really been out of it for a long time. Well, I couldn't last seven miles. I couldn't even last seven minutes.

"Pa, take Dolly's reins for me, will you?" I asked him as I dismounted, offering the reins. "And keep an eye out, I'm just going to go over to that thicket for minute."

He looked surprised. "You can't hold it until we get home?"

I love Pa. I really do. But he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed. If you wanted to break one of those foundation support 4-by-4's in half? Just drop it on Pa's head.

"No, Pa, it can't wait," I answered simply, as I pressed Dolly's reins into his hand resting on his saddle horn.

He grunted as he took the reins, and I scurried into the thicket about twenty feet away, calling over my shoulder, "Pa! Look the other way!" His head whipped away. Yup: love him, but thick.

I dropped trou and squatted. Ah! I closed my eyes in relief!

But then something really weird happened. I was suddenly cold, except for my very full and warm pad — _pad? _— and very warm and wet panties. I felt the panties overflow and warm wetness trickled down my leg. I was wrapped in a blanket, a now wet blanket, and felt myself being carried rapidly somewhere. I had been dreaming. I had woken up in the midst of one of _those_ dreams. I bore down hard, blocking the release of my full bladder. I opened my eyes peering into the darkness to see a full moon, a forest, and my Rose. No, not my Rose. That was a dream: Rosalie was carrying me, not my Rose.

_It doesn't matter, anyway._ I reflected bitterly. The Rose in my dream didn't love me, and this Rosalie didn't even know of my dream to know to love me ... to know that I ...

No. It was just a dream.

We made it to the outhouse in record time. All in one motion, Rosalie slammed open the door, unwrapped me from my blanket, set me down and stripped off my pad and panties.

The problem here was that I was beyond desperation, and the cold shock on my feet combined with the cold shock of the air hitting me as the blanket disappeared caused me to lose control down there. I squeezed hard, fighting to keep it in, but this was a battle I was losing in the forest, and I totally lost it here.

Pee sprayed out as I was standing, and the moonlight illuminated the most horrifying sight: Rosalie's hand. Rosalie's perfect hand. Rosalie's perfect right hand was in the act of removing my panties as my pee came out.

It splattered against her hand, deflecting onto my leg and then dribbled onto the floor of the outhouse.

Quick as lightning, Rosalie had the seat cover up and me completely supported with her left arm and sitting on the seat.

The shock hit and then rocked me. I opened my mouth to say ... what? What could I say for what just happened, for what I had just done?

"Rose," _No, not Rose,_ "...alie, oh, my God, I really, really ... God, Rosalie, I'm really sorry!"

She was holding her right hand away from ... well, everything and was careful to keep my feet and hers away from the little puddle on the floor.

"I am so, so sorry, Rosalie. I'm really sorry."

When would I ever finish peeing? It seemed to go on forever, and my shame did not go away. I shivered in the cold, and tears sprang out of my eyes. I was just leaking out of everywhere.

Stupid tears. Stupid pee. Stupid me.

I finished, but then realized we couldn't do our routine. No coals; no water bucket. And this was the one time I really, _really_ needed to wash off the dirty areas. I burned with shame.

"Rosalie, I..." I heard a tearing noise and felt myself being wiped as I sat: my nethers and my legs. Then she bent over, and I heard cleaning sounds and felt her wipe the floor.

Of my pee.

My teeth were chattering, but I managed to get out: "No, Rosalie, please let me clean that; it's my fault."

She ignored me. She was already done. What was I going to do anyway? Clean the floor of the outhouse, freezing, nearly buck naked? I still hadn't recovered from my last resurrection. She'd probably have to save my life again as I succumbed to the cold.

I burned with shame and impotency.

She shifted her left arm down my back and under my bottom, hoisting me up from the seat. I understood: I wrapped my legs around her stomach.

The cotton of her PJs felt nice against the inside of my thighs. Then I remembered that I was rubbing her shirt with a part of my body that had just finished its job inside and outside the outhouse.

Will this shame have no end? I didn't think I could sink any lower than bottom!

I just put my head on her shoulder as more tears leaked out. Just like I had put my head on Pa's shoulder. Because she didn't love me.

Rosalie wrapped a much smaller blanket around me. _Oh!_ I noted dully, she had shredded that, just like she had shredded the strangling sheet. Just like she had shredded my sweaty tee.

And her eyes, when she shredded the tee, never once looked away from mine, because there was nothing of interest for her to see.

By the time we got back to the cabin, my quiet sighs had turned into sobs. I tried to hold them in as best I could, but some still managed to rip their way out of my chest.

The bed was stripped, of course, thanks entirely to me. Rosalie scrounged a couple of towels and laid them on the bed, all the while not letting me go, and then she laid me on those towels.

She looked at the nearly exhausted supply of clothes — _thanks to me!_ — and somehow fashioned a blanket out of them. She got a pad, and it appeared to be my last pair of panties, and pulled them up over my legs, covering my shame before she covered me with the "blanket".

I hope that, since we were out of underwear, she would just kill me tonight or in the morning, instead of wasting more time on me.

_Yeah, um, Rosalie, sorry about pissing all over you, but I think I love you; what do you say?_

Yeah. I hoped she would kill me now or in the morning.

I watched as she stoked the fire. Why did she bother? _She _wasn't affected by the cold! As she tended the fire, she put both hands into the flames for a long time, and then picked up an ember and crushed it against her hands, rubbing them together. I remembered that soap was made from ash. She went outside and came back in, rubbing her hands, placing them back in the fire. I heard the hissing of steam. She must have rubbed her hands in the snow.

As I watched her, I continued to cry, sobbing as quietly as I could. She came over to me, a cup in her left hand and gave it to me to hold. She propped me up, and I drank it down. It was water ... not arsenic. Bummer. Then she put me down and turned me away from her. Because she couldn't stand the sight of me, obviously. A fresh wave of tears fell from my eyes onto the pillow. She'd have to burn that, too.

Maybe she'd burn the house down. That way she could take care of everything at once. Nice and neat. Let a few embers from the fire fall onto the floor ... problem solved.

As I swam in the pool of these black thoughts I couldn't help but notice that Rosalie lay down next to me. _Why?_ Then I felt her warm hands rubbing up and down, up and down, up and down my back. I was too tired to be confused, to hope, to keep crying, even, to do anything at all other than let her warm, powerful hands ease me into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

**A/N:** I have a picture of "my Rose" on my blog at twilight-dad-dot-blogspot-dot-com. Look up the keyword "Rose" or search the topics "Rosalie" and "fan fiction".


	25. Breakfast Time for the Human

**Chapter summary:** A complete enigma. One moment, she's clinging desperately to my shirt, begging me to kill her first before I leave her, and the next she's storming off into the forest — not in socks this time, but in _bare feet_ — to scream bloody murder at the trees. I have to keep my distance for her own safety and stability; getting too close to her just hurts her too much.

* * *

I woke confused, buffeted by a host of images from my dreams of last night. Well, I _hoped_ they were all dreams! They seemed so real. The right side of my face rested on something hard and cold, but that helped my head. The headache was gone, but my head still felt very tender. I blinked my eyes open, but my view was obstructed, I tilted my head back and looked up to see a pair of yellow-golden eyes watching me. _Rose! ... no, Rosalie. _I was in the crook of her arm. I looked at my blanket: it was a patchwork of scraps of clothes. They weren't dreams. Shame knifed through me as I remembered what I had done on our outhouse trip. I turned away from her quickly, covering my face in my hands. The cold left my right cheek to be flooded by the heat of my blush.

I missed that cold. I missed it so much.

"Oh, my God. Oh, Rosalie!" Well, at least I did one thing right: at least I said her name — _her_ name — without confusing it with the name of my dreams. "I am _so_ sorry! I am really ..."*

I felt her arm disappear from under me and felt her body leave the bed. She couldn't stand me. That was understandable. _I_ couldn't stand me. I drew my knees up and hugged myself, and then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned my head out of my wallowing embrace. Rosalie was standing by the bed, fully clothed. She lightly rested her hand on my hip and then pointed out the door, raising her eyebrow.

I guess I had better pull myself together if I was going to go. And I did need to go.

I guess I had just better pull myself together.

"Um, could I have a drink of water first?" I coughed. Oh, yes: _be careful with the throat,_ I reminded myself. My throat was dry; a drink of water would help.

Rosalie frowned and left my side. Sometimes when Rosalie frowned, really interesting things happened. Things like flames shooting out of the stove because of her spit. I turned my body and sat up in the bed, watching her. At least I could: she wasn't blurring all over the place like she's done before. She walked beyond the stove, which had the pot boiling on it, toward the sink. The stove obstructed my view. I heard the sound of liquid being poured from a bottle, and she came back to where I could see her, putting a cup on the table. She took the other cup, filled it with the liquid from the pot, and went outside with it.

I burned with curiosity. What had she poured from behind the stove? I was resolved to find out, but before I could move, she was back inside, grabbing the other cup from the table and was then standing in front of me.

She handed one of the cups to me. I took it and raised it to my mouth, sniffing it first.

Honey. The smell of honey came almost visibly off the liquid. A smell very much like how Rosalie smelled. I lowered the cup from my lips and glared at her.

"What _is _this?" I just _had_ to know.

She shrugged. "Medizin." she responded off-handedly ... off-handedly through clenched teeth. She lifted the cup back up to my lips.

Yeah, right. _Medicine. That_ was entirely believable.

I took a pull from the cup, but intentionally took too much, letting a drop fall out the side of my mouth. The liquid stung my tongue again then slipped down my throat, coating and relaxing it. Whatever it was, it did work.

I wiped my chin with my finger and looked, but I couldn't tell anything about it. It wasn't exactly syrupy, and I couldn't distinguish its color from my skin color. It was darker, maybe? Rosalie was pulling the cup from my hands.

_Act. Now._

I pretended to be caught by surprise, and jerked back. She got the cup, but a more substantial bit of it splashed out.

"Oh! Whoops!" I exclaimed, watching with eagle eyes the liquid fly out of the cup onto my leg.

The sunlight streaming through the window caught it as it fell. The rays refracted through the liquid in a dark golden color. My mouth dropped open in shock, and the breath caught in my throat. I looked from my leg to her brighter golden eyes framed by her straw colored hair ... her straw colored hair with streaks of lighter and darker shades of gold cascading in a wave down around her perfect face.

"It...it...it really is your voice, isn't it?" I whispered to those eyes in an awed tone.

Those eyes rolled as she handed me a cup. I took it with numb fingers, and drank from it in a daze, my eyes not leaving hers. Thankfully it was water this time, or I might have burned my throat again, like last night ... like last night? _Oh, no!_

"Um, I didn't say anything ... um ... like ..." I think I did. I think I recall mentioning that I would find a vampire boyfriend for her. I think I had her lie down in bed with me, too. In fact, I know I did. That is, unless she decided that last night would be a good night to start sharing the one bed. Didn't she mention she didn't sleep?

And I think I was rubbing her legs with my feet, and after I had touched her smile with my fingers, I think I touched her ...

_It was an accident! _I blushed, and tried to look away, but her eyes penetrated mine, reading much more than what I wanted to be known. Which was funny, in a way, because my mind was in a total haze: I didn't know what I was thinking to know what to hide from her.

The cup in my hand was floating halfway between the bed and my mouth. I was frozen in her gaze and my embarrassment. I don't know how long this went on, but eventually Rosalie looked down at the cup between us. Breaking the eye contact seemed to break a spell. _Oh, I was supposed to be drinking this water._ I quickly lifted the cup back up to my mouth and tilted it back. Too far. Water spilled out of the cup off my chin and onto my tee.

Rosalie shook her head. That's a great impression I was making with her: Bella the drooling idiot. The _babbling_ drooling idiot. She ripped a small piece of the patchwork blanket she had made and wiped my chin, then grabbed the bottom of the front of my tee and wiped it ... I couldn't help but notice that she was wiping the same area on me where I had _accidently_ brushed against on her. Her wiping was rather harsh, however, and I felt rather glum for it. With the now wet rag, she wiped away the now sticky splash on my leg, too.

I watched her do all this, like I was a little child that couldn't take care of herself. That's what her face was telling me as she concentrated on cleaning me up. She took the cup of water from me and handed back the cup of "medicine". There was hardly any left — I guess the spill nearly emptied the cup — so I finished that. This morning I had hardly drunk as much as I did last night, but numbness still began to invade my cheeks. I decided, however, that a repeat of last night's comedy show was not in order, and kept my hands on my lap after she took the cup from me. She handed me the cup of water, and I finished it with exaggerated care. She took that cup from me, looked at my bedraggled self and smirked.

Yeah, I was quite the sight.

Then she did start blurring about. She left the cabin and came back seconds later with the pail. She filled it with embers, but, before she disappeared again, she retrieve a new tee from the nearly non-existent pile of clothes and tossed it to me. _I_ didn't catch it, but the bed did. That's me, coordinated, too! My limbs did feel a little funny ...

Rosalie was gone again. I had better get on the new tee before ... Rosalie was back again, standing in front of me, arms crossed.

I sighed, waiting for the rending of clothes to commence, but she just stood there. I looked at her in confusion, the she waved toward me and the tee. I guess I was supposed to change myself now.

Rosalie kept looking at me, and suddenly I felt very shy with her eyes on me. I turned in my seated position so that I was facing away from her, lifted the wet tee over my head, tossed it aside, and put on the fresh tee as quickly as I could. When I turned back around, I saw Rosalie putting my wet tee into the stove, and the fire hissed angrily as it consumed it.

What? Vampires didn't believe in washing clothes?

She came back to me with a pair of socks which she handed to me.

Somehow, I felt a loss: she wasn't dressing me anymore. Did she trust that I could do it now? Did she have more patience to allow me to do it at my speed? Did she get tired of babying me?

I didn't know the answers to any of these questions, and I didn't see any in her face or in her posture ... but I felt that she wasn't really trusting me more. No, she was distancing herself from me.

I didn't know, either, that putting on socks could be such an emotionally loaded activity. But I could do it; I did do it. I'm a grown-up now, see? I can take care of myself ... all by myself. I don't need any stinking vampire to get me dressed. I didn't need any vampire to take care of me, either.

_No._ I refused to cry. I felt my jaw tighten as I gritted my teeth and concentrated hard on pulling up the socks without tearing them.

When I had pulled up the second sock, I found myself wrapped in my "blanket" flying through the forest in Rosalie's arms. I looked at her face the whole time, but she didn't look at me, she kept looking straight ahead, not meeting my gaze.

In the outhouse, she deposited me in front of the toilet, and I had to take down my panties. My pad was less full. Day three of Bella's Period. I wondered if eternity felt like this to her, because it sure felt like my period had gone on forever. I removed the pad, and laid it on top of the urinal flap. Rosalie took it right away and tore off another piece of the blanket. She left the outhouse and was back right away. When the door opened at her return, sending in an unwelcome blast of cold air, I saw that the outhouse was surprisingly clean. Immaculate. It was if what happened last night, all of it, was just a really crazy dream. But the patchwork blanket told me otherwise.

She did wash me. Thank God! Another piece of evidence: I just felt so dirty and was grateful for her care in this matter. I don't think I could have managed to lift the warm pail of water without some mishap. As usual.

She did the usual routine. She put the pail down, handed me a fresh pad, and stood me up. She made me put in the pad on my old panties — we were completely out of panties for me — and then handed me a tin full of lime for me to spread.

I started to become concerned. Was she making me do all these things by myself to teach me how to live on my own in the middle of nowhere? Was she going to abandon me soon? Was that how I was to die? So ordinary! A girl out on the frontier who thought she could make it on her own was simply overcome by the harsh demands of the country. I remembered the dream of the forest calling to me, and I shuddered. I hope she would give me some warning before she left me, so I could beg for a quick death from her hands, rather than that endless cold embrace.

I held the tin in my hands, looking at her. She waved toward the toilet, but I didn't move.

"Rosalie, you aren't going to leave me here, are you?"

She gave me a quizzical look, held up one finger, and waved again toward the toilet. It took everything I had to turn from her to my task, but then I was nearly overcome by anguish when I felt the door open and then shut.

She was gone.

I fell to my knees in front of the toilet, holding the tin in a death grip, my elbows resting on the toilet seat, holding me up.

She wouldn't just leave me here. _She wouldn't! _She had just rescued me around here in the snow. She knew I would die on my own. If she knew that, she wouldn't leave me, like she just did. Or if she was planning on leaving me here to die, she wouldn't have rescued me yesterday. She wasn't going to leave me here; it just didn't make sense. She had held up one finger, I could give her a minute before I panicked.

Before I panicked more, that is.

One minute. I could wait that long. I looked at the tin, opened the seat and poured in the lime.

One eternity. I put the tin back in the drum.

Two eternities. I sat down on the toilet seat. The outhouse was starting to cool down noticeably.

Three eternities. ...

Oh, God! She was really ...

The door opened, and Rosalie stepped in. I didn't know whether I wanted to kill her or to kiss her, so I just concentrated on keeping my breath even and shallow. She looked at me and smiled, but her eyes were careful.

She put the candle out, bundled me up, and we raced off into the forest.

"Just promise me, Rosalie: just promise me you'll kill me, okay? Just don't abandon me here, please? Kill me first before you go." I whispered these words to her as the cabin came into sight. She didn't look at me, but somehow I could see my words touching her. Touching her, then falling away from her. I wanted to force her to stay with me. I saw in myself a weak, needy, clingy little girl. And I saw Rosalie pushing me away: making me do things by myself, separating herself from me with her hardened expression. I knew how this would turn out: I would cling to her more, and she would distance herself from me more. My very desire to make her stay would push her away.

I couldn't allow this. I had to be strong, as she was strong, as I had always been strong up to now. But I just didn't know how to be strong anymore. Had I died too many times? Had she overwhelmed me with her power? Did I learn to lean on her so much that I couldn't even put on my panties anymore?

I had to be strong now. If I was weak, she would leave me, and I would die here alone. If I was strong, she would stay. And she would kill me.

So, what was the point of being strong again?

The point was I couldn't stand what she thought of me now. I couldn't stand looking at that look in her eyes. The point was I wouldn't die alone. The point was I could look myself in the mirror and not be ashamed. I would respect myself. She would respect me.

That was the point. That was worth living for now. That was worth dying for later.

That was worth being strong for.

She opened the door to the cabin and sat me at the table. What I saw there turned my determined thoughts into surprised ones. _What was this?_

Before me was a cereal bowl filled with oatmeal with a small puddle of milk on top, a spoon beside it. I gasped. But that wasn't all: Rosalie reached into a box under the sink and pulled out a Ball jar and placed it beside the bowl; it was canned peaches.

"Oh, my God!" I shouted. I stood up so fast the chair fell backwards. I ran to the rather large box and bent over to examine its contents. More canned peaches, canned beats?, in a rather large jar there were eggs floating in a saline solution, a squat brown bottle, the medicine?, lots of jars of honey, a box with "Earl Grey" written on its side — tea? well, I would have preferred coffee, but I wasn't complaining — canned cukes, canned baby corn, canned tomatoes, quaker's oats, raisins, flour, corn meal, oil, orange marmalade ... peanut butter. Peanut butter.

I stopped looking in the box and grabbed that jar and sat down hard on the floor. _I didn't even ask for peanut butter._

Some time later I felt a tap on my shoulder, I looked up to see Rosalie smiling down at me. My cheeks were wet. She pointed to the table. I nodded and got up, reluctantly replacing the peanut butter into the box. _It will still be there later_, I tried to reassure myself.

As I was sitting down, wiping away the tears, checking the box to make sure it didn't disappear, I asked stupidly, "Where did you get the milk?"

She looked at me quizzically and then looked over at the sink. Sitting on the counter beside it was a full case of cans of Carnation evaporated milk. I counted six across and then I counted four back: twenty-four cans. How could I have missed them? But ... how could I open them when she was away? Would I just have to wait?

"But ..." I began, but she took a can from the case, and poured a bit more milk into my bowl. It had the two tell-tale triangles punctured into its top. My mouth dropped open. She replaced it and took the can-opener from behind the case and placed it on top of one of the cans. She looked smug, so proud of herself.

My chair slammed back on the floor as I leapt at her, she backed away slightly looking shocked, but I ignored that and grabbed her in a bear hug.

"Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!" I whispered fervently into her shoulder.

She began to relax slightly in my embrace, but I was already outside, shouting into the woods.

"See? _SEE! _Do you see what she did?" I shouted this toward the forest with triumph.

Then shock absolutely froze me, and it wasn't from the cold of the snow knifing through my socks. Rosalie held me the entire night after my terrible dream; I was a heavy sleeper, but I think I would have felt her leave me, like I did this morning. I felt her pull her arm from under me and leave the bed, I felt that on the bed, and I felt her withdrawal in my heart. I felt that this morning, and I would have felt that last night in my sleep if she did leave me. But she didn't. She stayed with me after rescuing me from me strangling myself. I realized then that the only time Rosalie could have brought those supplies into the cabin was when that voice was whispering those awful words to me. So it knew. _It knew._

"You LIED!" I was still shouting, but now I was furious. _"YOU LIED TO ME! YOU KNEW, AND YOU LIED TO ME!"_ I stormed toward those trees where I had been, intending violence. But then Rosalie was in front of me, appearing in a blur, and unceremoniously scooping me up in the same embrace she had held me last night where I had soiled everything, including, in that embrace, her PJs. This time I was beyond thinking about my savior, being so furious at my tormentor. I wrapped my arms around her neck, and my legs around her back and gave a death glare toward that implacable forest as she marched me back to the cabin.

"I swear," I whispered toward whatever it was, careful of Rosalie's sensitive ears, "if I ever hear you again, I will kill you. Don't ever show up in my dreams again. _Ever."_

I knew the combination to the armory at the court house. I would go right back to Ekalaka, and take a shotgun and every single shell that I could find, and I would shoot every single tree here if I had to, I will kill every single animal, I would blow apart every single flake of snow. Hm. There were probably not enough shells for that. Gasoline. That would do it. I would go to one of those Petrol Stations; they must have one in Butte, I was pretty sure. I would dump out all the lime in the outhouse and fill that drum with gasoline, and I would come back here and burn this forest down to the ground, melting every single snowflake in the process.

I didn't know what made me angrier. I don't recall being lied to. But about Rosalie? The scary thing was that it wove its tale using truths and half-truths and lies: a tale that I almost believed. I think that's what made me angry, too. Not only had I lost my belief that everything was good and filled with the best of intentions, but I had almost listened to those evil lies about Rosalie.

I swore this, too: if _anything_ said _anything_ bad about Rosalie, I would rip its lying tongue right out of its mouth and put it back in the right way. Any bad talk about Rosalie had to be just plain backward. I wouldn't stand for it, idly listening to such nonsense, it was simply wrong, and I would fix it, but good.

We were back in the cabin, and Rosalie sat me on the bed and removed the snow-encrusted socks, wet now from the small amount of heat from my feet melting the snow into the wool. Rosalie turned, I guess to get another pair of sock to put on me, but I was already out the door again.

I had just had an epiphany.

"You know what, though," I shouted conversationally toward the forest, stalking toward it. "I _can't _kill you. Know why? _You're just a dream!"_ The 'conversationally' had left the tone in my shout, and now I was screaming bloody murder: _"You're not real! You don't exist!"_ Boy, was I giving that no-thing what-for.

_"But Rosalie isn't a dream." _Well, Rosalie _was_ a dream, but she wasn't a _nightmare. _I wasn't in the mood to argue semantics at this time, however, as I was on a roll. _"Rosalie exists. Rosalie is real. ROSALIE IS GOOD! ROSALIE TAKES CARE OF ME! ROSALIE..."_ was tapping me on the shoulder.

I looked over at her impassive stance, her closed-off face, her crossed arms. "Oh!" My breath left me in a huff.

She did one of her languid and elegant, but also imperious, waves toward the cabin, waiting. I guess she was going to let me walk back by myself. Maybe _'let'_ wasn't the word: I guess she was going to _make_ me walk back to the cabin. I didn't notice the snow when I stormed out of the cabin in my rage, but my anger was gone now — air escaped from a deflated balloon — and the snow wasn't. As I walked back, crunching through the snow with my bare feet, each footfall that broke through the crust reminded me of the lancing pain I had felt on my foolhardy trek yesterday around this time toward the outhouse. I tried to hold it in, but by the time Rosalie opened the cabin door for me, little whimpers escaped past my compressed lips. So much for being the tough girl.

So, we were back in the cabin. Rosalie closed the door behind us and leaned against it, going for the casual look. Nothing about her was casual, however: her eyes were hard as they watched me, and her arms were crossed against her chest. I decided that now was a good time to be placating. As my feet began sucking in the heat of the cabin, I sat down in front of the oatmeal and stirred in the milk that was floating on top.

"Thank you for breakfast," I said pleasantly.

There was not one hint of a response from Rosalie: she continued to watch me with hard, unforgiving eyes.

Well, okay: clinging to her made her pull away from me, but I guess I went over the top on coming out too strong — _it wasn't like I was doing that on purpose; I was really, really furious!_ — and that made her act like this. This was just so hard: if I were too weak or too strong, she distanced herself from me. I had to learn to walk that middle ground. I had to stop thinking only of my own misery or concerns, or she would just up and leave me here to die on my own.

I took a few bites of oatmeal. After the unvarying diet of antelope soup — which was good when you were hungry — the oatmeal had a shocking grainy, almost nutty, flavor, very pleasant in its familiarity. Rosalie still leaned against the door, staring at me.

"It's okay, Rosalie. See, I'm eating breakfast. Nothing to worry about anymore, I got it out of my system; I'm fine now." I tried reassuring her.

She shifted slightly, not moving an inch from leaning against the door, however. She uncrossed her arms and dropped her eyes, examining her cuticles critically. The anger, however, did not leave her eyes, but spread through her face, making her jawline and cheeks hard. She was distant and remote: unforgiving.

I turned back to the oatmeal and took another bite. It wasn't sweetened, but I didn't think now was the time for special requests. _Why? Why was she still angry? _I thought to myself. So what if I ran outside and shouted at the forest; what was the big deal?

And then the oatmeal in my mouth turned to ash, and I swallowed it reflexively in a big lump, almost choking on it.

She had read my mind again. She had read my mind outside. When I was shouting at the forest, she stopped me just before I could say the words.

_'Rosalie loves me.'_

She stopped me, because it wasn't true. She was just filling the order, that was all: taking care of the human, for whatever reason she had, but she didn't do this out of any personal feeling on her part.

_She didn't love me._

She didn't love me. _Of course she didn't love me!_ What was to love? A crazy girl shouting incoherently at a bunch of trees, pissing on her hand, or crying all the time, when she wasn't being killed by something.

Besides the obvious fact that she was girl, and I was girl. Girls don't love girls. _Normal_ girls don't love girls, and here I was, a crazy girl, totally out of hormonal control, pining for her captor. Lovely. She had stopped me as a kindness to me. She saw my dignity was in shreds already, but she wanted me to keep just that one last shred, to hold on to that one last thing, so that when she was talking again, she wouldn't have to crush me: she wouldn't need to correct my bald-faced proclamation to the whole world. _Yeah, about all that shouting, _she would say to me, _sorry to let you down there, but you're really not my type, you know? And anyway, I like guys, okay? Maybe you should give that a go? You're not pretty, or anything, but guys aren't all that discriminating either, and I'm sure there's someone desperate enough to give you a try ..._

I pushed the oatmeal in front of me away and whispered down into the table, "Um, I've had enough, thanks." I couldn't dream of swallowing past the lump in my throat, anyway.

Rosalie did look up at that. She saw the bowl three-quarters full. She probably saw me, the stupid girl who ran into the snow shouting crazy things, refusing to eat the breakfast that she had so painstakingly foraged for and prepared.

She didn't look pleased. She crossed the cabin to sit next to me at the table. She opened the jar of peaches, took out one with the spoon, ladled it on the oatmeal and chopped it into bite-sized pieces with a few, swift, efficient strokes. I watched out of the corner of my eye, so I saw her scoop a spoonful of oatmeal and a cube of peach and bring the spoon to my lips.

It reminded me of what Pa did when I was a little girl when I was petulant and refused to eat my meal. He would make a silly game of it, as only he could: he would pretend the spoon was an airplane, and it was flying through the air, but ran out of fuel an had to land in a mountainside cave. He would wave the spoon through the air and make propeller noises — _brrrrooum! brrooum!_ — enchanting me into giggling to an opened-mouth landing strip.

I opened my mouth for Rosalie now, as I had opened my mouth for Pa when I was a little girl ... I wasn't giggling this time, though, still overcome by my realization. The oatmeal and peach went in. It should have tasted sweet. It didn't. I knew exactly what it tasted like: it tasted exactly like what it looked like. The oatmeal looked like vomit; the peach kind of looked like a horse turd. Manure and vomit; that's what it tasted like. Exactly like what Rosalie ate every day, because of me. No, not because of me: instead of me. She chose to eat the way she did because it was _her choice._ I had nothing to do with her decision.

She scooped out another bite from the bowl, and I sighed. If she could eat the way she did every day, well, then, so could I. I didn't even have to. After all, it was oatmeal flavored with evaporated milk and peaches. I would have killed yesterday for such a banquet I had before me today. _Buck up, Bella: do at least something right by Rosalie today._

"Rosalie," I stopped her with a look, "you're going to make me finish that bowl, aren't you?"

She nodded, so I told her my story: "You know, when I was a little girl ..." and relayed the happy memory I had of Pa feeding me. She listened to my story with interest, the hardness leaving her face, her hands folded, the spoon resting in the bowl.

"The point is," I finished my story, "I'm not a little girl any more, am I? I'm a big girl now, and I can feed myself. Thank you for breakfast: I'll show you my thanks by finishing it." I pulled the bowl back in front of me, away from her, and recommenced eating. Somehow, the food tasted a little more palatable now that I had determined to eat it. I couldn't help but notice the slightest trace of sadness cross Rosalie's face. Was she enjoying playing mommy to this irascible girl, and I had taken away her fun?

No. I shouldn't delude myself. This was just the hormones talking. Tomorrow, as my period loosened its grip on me, things would start to make sense again.

A traitorous voice whispered in my mind: _Just because you feel something during your period doesn't make it any less real._

I told myself to shut the hell up. I was sick and tired of voices inside and outside my head making my life a complete misery. I should just get back on the game plan. Take things one day at a time, look for an escape, and quit inventing fantasy worlds with romantic, magical, amazing, beautiful vampires who loved me. Because such a fantasy world did not exist.

Rosalie remained seated beside me and watched me finish the bowl, and, even though this wasn't a fantasy world, her company was a comfort to me.

Just a comfort, nothing more than that. But it was still a comfort, and she was still a magical, amazing and beautiful vampire. Who didn't love me.

And that was fine. _One day at a time,_ I reminded myself.

She took the bowl and rinsed it in the sink ... I should have done that. And then she motioned me over to where she was. Did she wish me to dry the bowl? I went over to her, and she placed in my hand two items. I opened my hand and looked down at it. A tooth brush and a tin of tooth powder; she reached under the sink and pulled out a large bottle from the box. I read the label: _Listerine._

A magical, amazing and beautiful vampire that remembered my oral care.

I was reeling. She was just taking care of me; that's all. She was just taking care of me, I chanted ... _remember to say thank you!_ I think I got the words out of my mouth correctly, but it was hard to hear what I said, because my head was so full of confusing and conflicted thoughts.

I think I also managed to brush my teeth. No, I _know_ I managed to brush my teeth, because the feeling I felt afterward was heavenly. You ever go a few days without brushing your teeth? ... then you know that feeling: _God! It feels __so_good__ to have my mouth clean again!_

After I had rinsed with the Listerine, I felt a tug on my tee. Rosalie waved at me up and down, and then tugged on her own shirt and pointed to the door.

"You're going to get me some clothes?" I clarified.

She nodded.

"You'll be gone for a few hours?" Again, the nod.

"Well, first, could I drink some water, I'm a little thirsty, and then be brought to the outhouse?"

We did do that routine, and the oatmeal did its job ... it, you know, kept me ... um, regular ... you know? This is just so embarrassing:_ I went number two, okay?_ Rosalie still held me by my arms the whole time: she didn't look once at me, and I didn't look once at her.

Okay, maybe I cheated with a few glances, but I was just making sure _she_ wasn't cheating. She wasn't.

When we returned, she checked and stoked the fire. I watched through everything: the trip out to and back from the outhouse, her washing me on my front side and back, the tending to the fire. Her face was impassive. It wasn't unfriendly toward me, but it didn't show any feelings for me either. She was the detached vampire kidnapper. Very professional. Nice of her, too, actually, to take care of the crazy girl.

She sat me at the table and held out her hand, palm facing me, pointing first with he other hand to herself, and then to the door.

"Okay," I said casually, "see you later then, I guess."

She disappeared out the door. I got up from the chair: I was going to explore the cabin for more treasures she had brought. But, suddenly, she was back.

"Do me a favfor," she spoke around gritted teeth, her musical voice a shock to me from its absence from this morning.

"Okay..." I responded, looking at her expectantly.

"Try not to get yourself kill'd whall I'm gone, okay?"

That Rosalie. What a crack up.

I rolled my eyes, but she waited. It seemed she was serious in her request — given our recent history together, I guess I could understand why she made this demand — so I responded, "Okay, I'll try." I finished my sentence talking to the air where she had been.

She could work on her patience a bit, too.

I would have added that to her "to-do" list, but I think I should hold off managing her life for a while: I needed to get a grasp on managing mine first. I sat back down at the table. Exploring the cabin could come later: I needed this alone time now to think.

**

* * *

* A/N: **The companion piece "Rose by a Lemon Tree" (RLT) on my profile page relays the events from Rosalie's point of view of what happened during the night up to the point where Bella awakens here. RLT answers some of the questions I have fielded from my readers, so it may interest you, but it comes recommended with strong _caveats. _Please read the first chapter of that piece, its _apologia_, before diving into that story.


	26. What is Lunch? Stake! geddit?

**Chapter summary**: She loves me; she loves me not. Oh! She loves me not. Oh, well. Who cares? But then: red steak, red wine, red ... blood? Good thing she already had lunch. My day couldn't get any better! ... I hated always being right.

* * *

Rosalie returned around lunch time. At least that was what my stomach was telling me. I had begun to think about exploring the box of food below the sink, but I knew what the combination of food, curiosity and boredom would do to me. I was a prisoner, in this cell of a cabin, forced into an idle state by my lack of clothes and the weather outside. It would be just my luck to chow down, stuffing myself, and have Rosalie come and fix me a huge lunch of whatever. And I knew what I would do: I would guilt myself into chowing down all of that, too.

Being a lard butt would not help me in my escape plans. And then there was the whole _Hänsel und Gretel_ thing. I wasn't going to be fattened up for any succulent suppertime snack, nosiree! I'd be on the lookout for when she was talking again: I wouldn't fall for a "here, look in the stove for me, willya?" _Especially_ if she added "my pretty" and an evil cackle at the end of it.

Did she like her food cooked? I figured she was more of a steak tartar lady, given the preference she had shown with Dolly.

I did volunteer myself before, but she seemed more distant now. Would I volunteer myself again if she asked me? Hm. She'd have to ask me very nicely, none of this cold shoulder mixed-signals stuff.

Cold shoulder, mixed-signals, saving my life three times a day stuff. I sighed.

_Where was I?_ Oh, yes: not overeating, and staying in shape. _Remember the plan? Escape? Live?_

Right. I would have to start getting some kind of exercise: I had never been so forced into a little area for so long. I could almost feel the muscles in my body starting to atrophy into blah.

Yeah, _'blah'_ is a medical term, okay? Back off.

I would also have to quit dying, that kind of put a damper on me doing anything else, and it also took its toll on my body. Me dying all the time was not the best way to stay healthy and keep in shape.

So I was very pleased when Rosalie returned that I was still alive and kicking. I could start a new tally. Gambling was popular in Butte. It could be like a new sport: Schrödinger's Bella.* _Is she alive? Is she dead? You don't know until the cabin door's open. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen!_

"Look, I did it! I'm still alive!" I reported brightly.

She didn't even look at me. She had her arms full of clothes, and on top of that she had four bags of stuff dangling from each hand. She quickly arranged everything, and then went to the stove with two more logs. She filled the cups with water from the stove top and then was outside and back in before I could blink, placing the cups on the table and finally turning to me, pointing at the cups. Then she was out the front door again.

You'd think I'd be annoyed, her not even acknowledging my little feat of staying alive, but I was prepared for this reaction from my think from earlier.

I had reviewed everything that happened between us from when we first met at the Hale household and had come up with a clear, dispassionate conclusion.

She didn't love me.

I had thought I had realized this before, but that was just my emotions talking. Now I knew for sure.

I mean, come on; _really!_ What happened in every situation that happened between us? First she was just scornful, but then she started saving my life, time and again. But what was she like while she was saving my life? Irritated, frustrated, angry. And then whenever I talked, I made things go from bad to worse. When she was saving my life, at least she wasn't screaming at me ... which she did whenever I talked with her.

I had been operating under an illusion that I had made up all by myself. I could see that clearly now. She didn't love me.

But how did I feel about her?

Well, I did owe her my life. Time and again. No, not even just that. Where did all my food come from? Where did the wood for the stove come from? Where did all my clothes come from? _And the pads. _ And a new set of clothes just added, too. Although I still didn't see any jacket and boots. Or hat, or ...

See, she had done all this for me, even though she doesn't love me, and I was still screwing up, I was still hurting her, this time with my criticism, even if it was just in my mind.

She doesn't love me. But I don't care. I love her.

I love her, no matter what she feels about me. Had she done all those good things for me? Yes. For me. Is she good? Yes. Is she good despite even her very nature?

Yes. _She a vampire who refuses to drink human blood, for crying out loud!_

Is she lovable?

Yes.

Yes, she is lovable: I love her.

I could be silly and say I don't care what she thinks. I know there are people like that, who don't give a fig what anybody else thinks. One of them is Pa. But not me. I _do_ care; I care very much. I _want_ her to like me ... I want her to be happy.

But she doesn't love me, and I don't think she even likes me. It's not that I'm a hateful person, it's just that there's nothing for her to love or to like. I'm just a nothing person, that's all. When I talked with her after she held me by the fire yesterday, saving me for the umpteenth time, I had thought: "why go through all this trouble for me?" I didn't know then, and I still don't know now. Actually, I do know why I don't know: because it just doesn't make sense. I'm just plain old Bella Swan. That's all: just nothing, just a nobody. Apparently, according to Rosalie, I'm so nothing I don't even deserve a name.

Nothing to see here, folks, move along.

So, she doesn't love me, and that's okay, ... I mean, I guess that's okay. But she's not happy, and that's not okay. She angry and annoyed ... all the time, obviously. But I also think she sad. Very sad. I can see that, oddly enough, when she smiles. She may have smiled when I was happy about getting the food, but at the very end of her smile there was that wistful look, that sad look. Her laughter in the forest when she was talking about me wasn't happy: it was the saddest sound I ever heard.

She has reason to be sad: a wedding gone bad, a husband gone bad, a life gone bad. But I think its something more than that, or it's something different than that.

And I don't know why. She's not talking about it with me.

Well, she's not really talking about _anything_ right now, but you know what I mean.

So, I guess I could add that to _my_ "to-do" list. Give Rosalie a reason to be happy about something for in her forever. See her smile once. But a real smile; a happy smile.

And, maybe, with time ... who knows? Maybe she'll come to ...

No. Don't even go there. All I do is irritate her, so I should just change that and find something about her to make her happy ... and that'll be enough. Escape or no, I can die happy with that: that I made Rosalie happy.

And, judging from her brusque entrance and exit just now, I _had_ to play it cool. She was playing it cool now, and it irritates her when I cry all over the place or go charging off into the woods screaming, so I just have to really bear down and keep the emotions in check. And not die so much. And not have my period.

Well, that last one is her own damn fault. _Kidnap me just before my period._ She could have waited a few days, couldn't she? What was I going to do? "Pa, Lillian Hale's a vampire, 'cause she's actually Rosalie Hale? Remember in the papers about that girl in Rochester who died a year ago ... ?" Pa was tolerant, but, really: who would buy that? He'd search my room for narcotics. For starters.

Well, she couldn't wait, and my period didn't wait. I guess we'd just have to work around each other's schedules, now, wouldn't we?

Rosalie came in again, this time loaded down with _more _clothes and linens and towels and such. She put the pile down, grabbed the bed linens from the pile, and made the bed, tossing the towels and the patchwork quilt that had been the linen last night by the stove.

Let me guess, more rending of cloth, followed by more burning. Yup, that's exactly what followed. Well, Mrs. Hale kept a really neat house, I recalled. I guess it's like a vampire rule, or something. I sat down at the table and started sipping the water, staying out of the way of Miss Busy-Bee.

"Um, thanks!" I called out to her back retreating out the front door. I tried to sound nonchalant and grateful. I hope it sounded right: cool, but not too cool. I looked at the new neatly folded piles on the floor. There were, besides all the clothes, more than a few sets of bed linens. Maybe I could tell her that she didn't need to go overboard there?

Nah. It wasn't a big deal, and she was calling the shots. _And_ _more care_ from her was much better than _less care._ As she banged back into the cabin, I took another gulp of water.

She had in her hand a blob of something that I couldn't identify. She put whatever it was into the sink and then removed the large iron pot of water from the stove — with her bare hands — and poured hot water over it. She then placed the pot beside the stove and then grabbed the can of olive oil from the big box under the sink, and poured copious amounts of oil directly on the stove top. She put the can back and then spread the oil over the stove top with her hands.

Her hands glistened from the oil, and smoke rose from them as well. I would just have to remember not to go near the stove and pull a stunt like that, because my hands wouldn't _be_ hands anymore if I did what she did.

She grabbed a hand towel from one of the clothes piles, wiped her hands and started pulling meal things out of the bags: a plate, which she set in front of me, along with a knife and a fork as well. Then she pulled out seasonings: salt, pepper, and some other spices that I didn't know what they were, but they started to fill the room with a delicious, herb-y, meat-y, smell. I breathed it in deeply and sighed. _Rosalie was cooking me a feast for lunch._

She, however, made no reaction to the smell. I had thought the smell would overpower any scent that I had, but her chest remained still, _corpse-like, _as she whirled about the cabin.

It really was just amazing to watch: her skill and precision, of course, but also the very image of it. Here was like a princess — that would be Rosalie — cooking for the pauper — that would be me — a wonderful something for lunch. It just seemed so upside-down and backwards. _I_ should be cooking _her _lunch, ... but that didn't make any sense either: _cooking lunch for a vampire_.

The something turned out to be a steak. Like, a 16-ounce steak, for crying out loud! She unrolled the mass of meat from the sink and laid it on the stove top, and the cabin instantly filled with smoke and the mouth-watering smell of venison, as Rosalie fanned the smoke away from her and applied the spices to the meat, making a good steak a masterpiece.

My mouth, obligingly, watered. I had to swallow a few times as she cooked.

She flipped the steak once and then served it — _plop!_ — onto my plate without ceremony.

"Wow! Thank you for lunch!" I exclaimed. So much for 'cool', but 'cool' went out the window with her display of culinary skills. I was now _so glad_ I hadn't dug into the jar of peanut butter earlier. As she washed her hands ...

... Okay, I just said that so casually. I bet you didn't get it — did you? — so I'll say it again: as she washed her hands _by picking up the hot iron pot and pouring scalding water over her hands, _...

Got it?

There was just no way to think "normal" or "person" or "normal person" around Rosalie.

... as she washed her hands _(got it this time?),_ I cut into the steak. It was cooked rare, and there was some clear liquid, but not one drop of redness to it at all. Not one. I didn't have any steak in my mouth, but I swallowed again. I could guess were she got this cut of meat from.

I took a bite of it, and I thought I had just died and went to heaven. I closed my eyes, leaned my head against the chair and chewed for as long as I could chew that first piece, savoring the flavor of the meat on my tongue. I sighed and opened my eyes to another surprise: beside my plate was a wine glass, and Rosalie was pouring a red wine from a bottle into the glass. She picked up the glass, swirled the wine in it and handed it to me.

I had never been on a dinner date before. And I was glad for that, because if I had, there would probably be no comparison to this ... she was treating me like ... like I don't know what she was treating me like.

She didn't like me, and then this: the full royal treatment. I just stared at her, confused, confused, confused, trying to make sense out of something I couldn't make sense out of.

She helped me out of my stupor by lifting the glass to my lips. I was going to say something about my age, but then the liquid hit my lips, and I tasted it on my tongue, and all thoughts left my head as that taste washed over my mouth. It was a little peppery and had the slightest taste of smokiness. It complimented the meat so perfectly that it demanded I take another bite right away. I put the glass down and cut myself another piece, chewing it slowly. The meat demanded another sip from the glass.

As I was sipping the wine, Rosalie pulled the canned baby corn out of the box and poured me a serving of that in my bowl, putting it beside my plate. She took another jar from one of the bags and opened it up, extracting a green tomato from the jar. She cut it up into slices on the stove and flash fried them there, flipping them a couple of times and then throwing them effortlessly onto my plate. Then she sat down across from me, assumed a casual position, and watched me eat.

That's when I realized something. Red meat and red wine ... I hear they're _good for the blood._

I swallowed, and worked very hard not to repeat the oatmeal incident. She had, just like this morning, put all this work into a perfect meal, _and_ she said she didn't drink human blood, so I'd better show my appreciation by finishing what was in front of me. She was watching me, apparently enjoying watching me enjoying my meal; the _least_ I could do was _to enjoy_ the meal. And thank her.

"Rosalie," I said sincerely, clearing my throat, "this is _so good! _ Thank you for making it." She smiled warmly ... and wanly. "Can I, um, I mean, do you want, um ..."

Common courtesy, you know: when you are eating, you offer the other people at the table something to eat. Well, common courtesy just had to take a flying leap out the window, I realized, because offering _the vampire_ something to eat ... well, I guess she had had some steak earlier today ... well, not steak but ...

Anyway.

She waved me on, so I ate one of the fried green tomatoes. It was crisp, crunchy, even, and had a slight taste of pickle and a slight taste of oil that went with its almost natural watermellon-like taste. Delicious. I then tried one of the baby corns, chewing thoughtfully as she watched me, interested but not intensely so. The baby corn was canned, so it was good, but the steak and the fried green tomato slices ... _Ah!_

I ate about half the steak before I was _just so full_ ... and a little happy from the wine. I glowed my thanks to her, apologizing for not eating it all. She didn't seem offended. She cleaned the table in front of me. I felt bad for not helping, but I didn't quite trust my legs, either, so I remained seated.

"So, what now?" I asked as she turned from the sink.

She patted her hip, pointed at me, and pointed toward the door, raising her eyebrow.

I actually did need to go, I realized. Pretty badly.

"Um, yeah, that soundz good, jes let me finish this wah-ter." I realized my words slurred a little bit, so I was careful at the end to pronounce the word 'wah-ter' with two distinct sounds.

Her majesty the chef nodded to me and disappeared out the door, as I reached, carefully, for my cup of wah-ter.

Good thing she wasn't trying to take advantage of me. It only took a glass of wine for me to feel tipsy. I remember the term 'cheap date' from somewhere and giggled.

Cheap date. That was funny.

Yeah, good thing she wasn't, like, trying to take advantage of me ...

_Bummer_. A tear trickled down my cheek.

_No crying, remember?_ I wiped away the thing and drank the wah-ter.

Rosalie came back in with the pail, grabbing another log by the door, and filled the pail with embers, then stoked the stove with the new log.

After doing that she hoisted me up —_ whee!_ — and we were out the door, flying through the woods, the sun that held me shining so much more beautifully than the sun above. God! She is just too beautiful! My own personal angel bringing me to the crapper.

I burped and tasted wine and steak.

"'Schuz me," I murmured and laughed easily. She looked down at me with a little smirk — a ruby smirk in a white flame face with eyes blazing of molten gold — and I smiled at her and wrapped my arms around Miss Smirky-Glowy's neck, resting my head against her cold, hard, comforting marble shoulder.

I sighed contentedly: it was her fault she was just too easy to love. _After that lunch? C'mon!_ So it was her problem that she didn't love me back.

_So there!_ I thought as I mentally stuck my tongue out at her. Read my mind. I don't care. _I LOVE YOU!_ There! Said it.

... in my mind, anyway.

I think the wine was making me feel a little ... well, I felt kind of warm, you know, toward her, you know? Like, a little, um, _sexy?_ My body felt tingly-funny, and I wanted to squeeze her or squeeze me or squeeze something. I blushed and smiled.

And she hadn't changed me out of my tee and panties. I mean, really! _C'mon!_

Like I said: all her fault.

We reached the outhouse, I had another surprise waiting for me: my pad was nearly empty. _My pad was nearly empty!_ Just a bit of blood there. While I did follow the instructions behind me, I hummed a little happy tune, just glowing inside, as she had glowed outside. When she washed me, I felt so connected to her.

Yes, I know. I wasn't really connected to her. She didn't love me. I realize I was deep into my own illusion. So let me just enjoy the moment, please? These moments were so rare, and the day couldn't get any better than this.

Sometimes, I hated always being right. I also hated not knowing _how_ right I was, and not knowing that right away. Having an early warning radar system didn't help at all if I so blithely ignored it, as I did now.

'Day couldn't get any better.' _Jeez! Understatement alert!_

But I did glow now, because she had new panties for me, and a new pad, which I only just needed. I felt like a new me! With tingly cheeks. And, as she changed me — _she changed me this time!_ — her hand never left my arm. I knew it was to steady me, but still ... it still felt nice.

My sun brought me back to the cabin, and as we went back I wrapped my arms around her neck again, and kept humming my happy tune. It didn't go away as we floated back.

She sat me down at the table on the chair facing away from the door, and then sat herself across from me at the chair near the sink.

Wow. She's spending time with me! "So, what now?" I ask happily ... happily but coolly.

She pushed another cup of water toward me across the table, and I took a sip and waited for a response.

And waited. She was staring at me, and it got a little scary again, in the way that, you know, she can make it scary with her looks.

"Nohwh," she announced through an unmoving mouth, "youh git to wherk." Her look was penetrating and significant.

I'm glad I had the cup of water. My mouth was suddenly cotton dry, and it took a large gulp of water for me to be able to swallow past my constricted throat.

* * *

*** A/N:** I am aware of the anachronism, as Schrödinger's thought experiment comes a year later, in 1935. Thank you very much. I didn't know how to work around this one gracefully.


	27. Essay Quiz Grade: F

**chapter summary:** She said she didn't drink human blood, but she didn't say anything about my soul. I didn't know I had one, until she started consuming it. I guess my shouting at her counted as "our conversation." I wonder if my body would keep breathing after she ate my soul?

* * *

I tried! I really tried!

I worked, or, as Rosalie — God damn her superior stares! — said "wherked", for two straight hours. She gave me the questions to answer: _who am I, what am I, why am I._

Why am I _what? Jeez!_

Essay questions. I really hated essay questions on tests when I was in school. All I could do was look at that question on top of the blank paper, and my mind would go right there: blank. I would write a sentence. Two sentences if I were lucky, and that would be all I could muster for the test answer.

"What, in your own words, were the motivations and aims of the participants in the Great War? Use specific dates, places and events to support your answer."

My answer: "They wanted to fight because they were stupid." Well, _they were! _They did say 'in your own words'. Notice how my answer was _shorter than the question?_

Stupid essay questions. _Of course,_ like the chicken I am, I erased my perfectly correct answer and spent _way_ too much time looking at the blank page wondering what I was supposed to write. I wrote something down.

The grade I got on that test? B-

Stupid essay questions. Now my worst nightmare, well, besides talking malevolent forests, has come to pass: a one-on-one essay test with Rosalie and _no time limits._ I didn't even have a blank piece of paper to stare at, I just had the most beautiful face in the world staring at me, reminding me of everything I wasn't.

I don't think I lasted even ten minutes before I started whining.

_"Jeez, _Rosalie! Who am I? I'm Bella Swan; that's my name, even if you say it isn't! What am I? I'm the Sheriff's daughter. Why am I? Why am I what? Why am I here? I'm here because you brought me here, that's why!"

"Quit hiding." She growled in response.

"I'm _not_ hiding!" I growled right back.

"Izzat yurh besss-t?" she demanded.

I crossed my arms at that and glared at her petulantly, sinking down in my chair a little bit more.

"No." I admitted, pouting, turning my mind back to the questions, hating them.

_Who am I, what am I, why am I._

_Why am I doing this!_ That's the real question. Why do I have to do this stupid self-examination in this stupid cabin in the stupid woods with this stupid vamp...

Well, _she's_ not stupid. I glared at her again. _Meanie!_

She got up and started pulling things from the box and filled one of the cups with hot water from the stove. She put something in the cup of hot water and brought it over to me, then brought a can of milk and a jar of honey.

I sniffed at the water. It was herbal tea. Maybe the Earl Grey from the box. I spent my sweet time adding the milk and honey and then taking the first sip.

It was okay. I mean, I never really drank tea. Coffee, now. Mmmmm. _Coffee._ It's been like — what? — three billion years since I've had my last cup of coffee. I took another sip of tea.

_Who am I, what am I, why am I._

_Grrrr!_

But then I wasn't thinking about those questions. I was thinking about what Rosalie asked me: _is that my best._ That question kicked me right in the gut. I _always_ did my best; it was just plain insulting to ask. Why couldn't she have given me a true/false or a multiple choice quiz? I could have aced those. But, no!

Besides, how could anyone ever say: _yeah, I did my best!_ What's _best,_ anyway? If I said it long, it would be better short. If I said it short, it should be longer. If I wrote it down, it should have been written in calligraphy. If I used calligraphy — which I couldn't, by the way, unless 'calligraphy' meant 'chicken scratch' — then I should have had it engraved. If I had my answers engraved, then I should have Mount Rushmored them. If I did that, then I should have rearranged the constellations, or something.

_Did I do my best!_

_Are we finished with this exercise yet?_ I looked at Rosalie; Rosalie looked at me.

Nope. I guess not.

It was really, _really_ _hard!_

I would have guessed that those nuns and monks that spent all day every day just thinking had an easy time of it. Some person: _Oh, yeah, what's your job? _Monk: _Me? I think, I fast, and I pray._ Some person: _Good work, if you can get it; heh, heh!_

I wanted to strangle that 'Some person': _good work? _Why couldn't Rosalie have me do something easier to do, like chop down a tree for firewood ... _with this spoon!_

I started to get that headache back. You know the one, right? The one last night that almost killed me? I took another sip of tea, and tried to think of what to say. Did she want me say what she wanted to hear? I looked at her again, then looked right back at my tea. No, she had that mean look like she could tell if I were cheating.

_Who am I, what am I, why am I._

God!

"Could we _please_ just do something else?" I begged.

Rosalie crossed her arms.

...

The window showed that the sky was darkening into twilight. A bathroom break and another cup of tea later, and I had had enough.

"Look, Rosalie, I _appreciate_ what you're trying to do here, but I've already figured everything out about me, okay?"

She didn't looked pleased at my announcement.

"No, listen to me! I already spent all morning thinking about me ..." _and about you ..._ "and I'm just not that interesting. Really."

Rosalie frowned at me, then pointed at me and pointed at her temple.

"No, there's nothing more to figure out, don't you get it? I'm not the interesting one here; _you_ are."

She shook her head, looking cross.

"Oh, please! You are, and you know you are! I mean, _look_ at yourself, will you?" and I waved in her direction for emphasis. "Newsflash: you're a _vampire!_ Isn't that interesting? I know you get all mad whenever I say the 'V' word, but let's just think about that for a second. Even for a vampire you're interesting! How many vampires are in the world that you know of? Hundreds?"

She shrugged.

"Thousands?" At this she shook her head in a _no._

"Okay, maybe hundreds, then. And how many _refuse_ to drink human blood? Besides you and the Hales?"

"Cuhllenz," she corrected me.

"Oh, right, the Cullens. How many?" She shrugged again. "Any at all, that you know of?" She shook her head slowly at that.

"See? That's my point! _You_ are _interesting! _You don't drink human blood and drink stuff that tastes terrible because why? Because of some principle? Because of some ethics? A principled vampire, out of the hundreds that are out there in the world? _That's interesting, Rosalie! But I am not!"_

She looked really angry and started to get out of her chair.

"No, Rosalie, you just sit down, shut up and listen to me!" Well, she wasn't doing much talking, but she got my point. She hovered half-rising out of her chair before she sat back down again. She waved at me to continue, but the look on her face said I'd be hearing from her later about this.

I heaved a heavy sigh, buried my face in my hands for a second, and then started over.

"Look," I said quietly, looking down at the table, and not at her beautiful, perfect and angry face, "it's nice that you think so highly of me, but you're just wrong. That's all. You just made a mistake. Just admit it and move on. If you were looking for somebody interesting in Ekalaka, you must have meant to pick up Kristen Kuntz. _She's_ pretty. Well, I mean not like ..." I waved toward the other end of the table where Rosalie sat, "... but not plain like ..." and my hand fell to my side. _"She_ has beaux, _she_ has friends, _she's_ smart, AND _her_ family is getting one of those new fangled motorcars. But me? I'm just ..." _nothing._ I shook my head. "I'm just a small town girl, the daughter of a small town sheriff. I'm just ..." I shook my head again.

I didn't know how to continue.

I cleared my throat and wiped my wet eyes. "You made a mistake, Rosalie. It's okay, everybody makes mistakes, even ..." I waved to the perfect creature at the other end of the table who I couldn't look at. "That's all. Don't waste your time any more ... " _on_ _me_. "Just move on. I promise ..." and here I did raise my eyes to her impassive face that held those intense golden orbs scrutinizing me. "I promise," I said, "that noone will know; I'll take your secret to the grave." I gave her a weak smile.

I dropped my eyes back to the table. I wondered if I would have a fiery grave, a watery grave, or if she would bury me after she killed me ... or bury me _to_ kill me.

... or, worst of all, she would just leave me out in the middle of the forest, so I would have a snowy grave.

Whichever kind of grave I'd be getting, I figured I'd be meeting it in a minute or two. I wondered if she would honor one last request: I wanted to tell her just one thing before I said goodbye to life.

I heard a smacking sound and the whole table shook, rattling the spoon in my cup of tea. I looked up to see Rosalie rising from her chair, glaring at me.

_"Fihne!"_ She looked absolutely furious, and I should have been terrified, but I was about to die, anyway, so what more was there to be scared of?

She patted her hip and pointed toward me with her chin.

_Huh?_

"Um, yeah, I guess I need to go ..." Is it like some courtesy? Let the victim use the potty before offing them?

She disappeared out the door and then reappeared a minute later with the pail. She filled it and then left again, then came back and scooped me out of my chair.

We did the usual routine in the outhouse. There were only a few spots on the pad.

_Perfect, isn't it?_ I finish my period just in time to say goodbye to life.

But it all just didn't make sense. The routine was exactly the same. I mean, wouldn't things be different just before the execution?

"Um, what are we doing?" I asked her as she spread the lime.

_"Nawt wii. Ayh_ am getting _yurh_ book," and she picked me up.

I reeled. "You _can't _be serious! A book? For me? Really? Are you joking?"

She shook her head. She didn't look amused; she looked serious.

"Oh, my God! Really? A book! Can be like ... " which book? which book? which book? _Silas Marner?_ I was going to read that next, but no: too serious. I needed some lighter, happier reading. One of the Jane Austen ones. "... _Sense and Sensibility?"_ Hm. Maybe that one? It had such a happy ending ...

But no, it was just too serious with the displaced family and the mean conniving of the sister-in-law: _Fanny._ I wonder if she had a big _"fanny" ..._ I giggled euphorically.

So, not that one. "No, not that one! Um, what I meant was _Pride and Prejudice ..." _Yeah! That one! "... because the main character, Lizzy, she's like really smart and funny, but she's carried on by events, but she's really feisty, too, right? But she's beautiful, right? I kind of picture her with long brown hair and a little bit sassy. But she always thinks the wrong thing about everybody. And Mr. Darcy. Wow! He's like really, really smart, but he, like, totally misses the boat on Lizzy, see? He says she's plain, right in front of her, right? But then, as soon as says that, he's like looking at her all the time to try to find fault, but he keeps seeing how beautiful she is. Especially since they're kind of like forced together out in the country. And he's really, really proud, right? But everybody is in awe of him, like he's supernatural, or something, right?"

Why was it taking so long to get back to the cabin? I looked around to see that we had slowed to a crawl, and I looked up to Rosalie in askance.

She was staring at me.

But why? What did I say? I was just describing _Pride and ..._

I gasped. I was just describing the current situation.

I grasped for differences to rescue me from my blunder. "But see, it's different than thi ..." _Shut the Hell up, Bella!_ a voice screamed helpfully in my head. "I mean, Lizzy's beautiful, see?" _Not like me. _ What else was different? Oh, Jane! "And she has this older sister, right?" Now we were back on safe ground, but, looking at Rosalie's intense stare, I didn't feel any safer, so I talked faster.

"Jane's the beautiful one, with pale white skin and long golden hai ... long golden hai ... " Oh, oh, oh ... oh, _shit!_ "But she's her _sister,_ see? So it's _different, _see?"

Rosalie's eyes seemed to pick up a faint glow in the dark, to grow more intense, and then they seemed to grow bigger. I felt funny. I felt the feeling leave my hands and my feet. And I couldn't stop digging my own grave with my big, fat mouth.

And I had never said _'oh, shit!'_ before, not out loud; not even to myself.

"But see, she tolerates Lizzy's pronouncements, because _she_ loves Lizzy ..." _not like you: you don't love me_ ... "and she's always looking for the good in Lizzy, even though Lizzy doesn't see it in herself, and Jane is kind and good and beautiful, but it take Lizzy to ... it take Lizzy ... to point ... to point it ..."

Rosalie's eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, I could only see her eyes now, and I felt myself being sucked into her intense stare. My arms and legs went away, and I could only feel my cheeks and my heart beating in my chest. My breath came in labored, short puffs.

There just had to be a difference with that story and this, the real world. This wasn't a story. This was real. This was happening. We weren't in a story. I had to convey that to Rosalie. It seemed like everything depended on this.

"... but ... but ... but there's Char..." I was going to point out the absolute difference. _Pride and Prejudice _had Charlotte Lucas. Here it was Rosalie — who _was not, _I say, _WHO WAS NOT! _the personification of Mr. Darcy and Jane Bennet — and plain old me, the not-smart, not-beautiful and definitely _not_ Elizabeth Bennet character. See, _Pride and Prejudice_ had Charlotte Lucas. _It was different._

But, that didn't matter now. I had figured out, too late, why we had stopped oh-so-conveniently between the outhouse and the cabin. Meaning, why we had stopped oh-so-far-for-me from the outhouse and the cabin, because now I could only feel my eyes looking into her eyes. Her eyes that filled the whole sky. Her eyes that filled the whole world.

She was sucking my soul out of my body.

I couldn't feel anything anymore. I didn't even know I had a soul. That is, I didn't know I _really _had a soul, until I felt it diminish in me ... until I felt it being consumed by her.

"Oh, God," I could only just whisper, and I wondered if I could even do that, because I didn't hear my voice anymore. I didn't feel my ears: they had gone far away, too ... "hel... help m..."

But I knew I was asking the wrong person for help. God judges your soul when you die, right? I just barely had one little drop of it left hanging on with all its might on the edge of my eyes as it was being pulled into Rosalie. God would have nothing of me to judge in a second or two. God would have nothing to help, just an empty shell that used to be my body.

The scariest thing in the world? The scariest thing about me dying? Or me going away? Wasn't it supposed to hurt? It didn't. It didn't feel like anything. It felt like nothing.

It felt like nothing.

I tried to close my eyes to save that one last little piece of my being. But I couldn't. I just couldn't, for Rosalie had that much power over me now.

Only one being could save me now. The one who had just consumed most of my soul. I had asked God for help, but I needed to ask ...

"Ro..."

The very last little piece of my soul ripped itself from my eyes and floated into oblivion: that eternal blackness of her pupils.


	28. Smart Girl

**Chapter summary**: Austen? Read it. Complete romantic drivel. But then the girl describes herself exactly, calling herself Lizzy, and me exactly as her older sister and faints dead away for no reason at all. Wait. 'Calls herself Lizzy'? Oh, my goodness! _FINALLY!_

* * *

Utter blackness.

My sense of self returned to me — _my soul_ — with my senses. I could hear and feel myself panting heavily, still captured in the afterimage of Rosalie's eyes sucking my soul right out of me. _My eyes_ were opened, but I couldn't see a thing in the blackness.

Is this what nowhere is like?

But then the dim light of the moon obscured by clouds filtered through the window, and I saw a little bit in the darkness. I lifted my hands to feel my cheeks.

They were there. I could feel them. I could feel everything now, and I reveled in that: being able to feel me. I don't think that I had ever been so relieved as when I felt my cheeks on my fingertips and when my cheeks felt my fingertips lightly brush and then press into my cheeks.

_My soul was back._ I just knew it. I knew it, because I knew what it felt like when it left me.

It felt like nothing. I felt nothingness take me as my soul left me.

But now I felt something. I felt the air rushing into and out of my lungs; I felt my hand, my cheeks, my body, the clothes on my body. I felt the pad, the panties, my tee, which was fresh, and now I was wearing PJs, a full set.

I had been dressed.

And tucked in. In fact, so tucked in that I couldn't move anything other than my arms at all. It was if I was bound to the bed by the blanket.

I had to understand what had happened, and what was going on, but I couldn't do that being so constricted.

"Rosalie?" I whispered into the darkness, but I neither heard nor felt any movement.

So I wiggled out of the blanket, using my hands to pry me out as I increased the space between it and me. _Jeez!_ Did she think she had to secure me to the bed? What? Was I going to get myself killed in bed?

Oops.

Um, yeah.

I guess that would be a valid concern of hers.

I finally got out of the blanket and sat myself on top of it. I didn't dare to venture forth from the bed. It would just be perfect — wouldn't it? — finding myself awake and then stumbling around in the dark to break my neck because I tripped over something I couldn't see. So like me.

Okay, back on track: what happened?

Rosalie took my soul. _Why?_ There had to be some reason for that. What would she do that for?

I had to think hard. Rosalie's smart — _really smart_ — and I'm ... not. Obviously. I'm always saying stupid things to her that makes her so angry with me, and when she explains to me what I just said, she makes it sound like any idiot would have known what I had said was bad.

Because she was right about that. _Kind for a vampire._ I had thought ... well, I thought I was saying something _nice_ to her, and I thought I was smart, showing her that I figured out that she was a vampire, but she just totally turned around what I said to make it sound like I had just said the worst thing in the world.

I sighed. Thinking about how dumb I am isn't helping me figure out what happened and why.

Rosalie took my soul ... why? Why was it important she take my soul? What did she need with it?

Unless she didn't need my soul? That is, instead of taking my soul to take my soul, she took it to do something else? Did she need to do something ...

Did she need to do something ... _to me,_ and my soul was in the way?

I started breathing heavily again. _Calm down, Bella; calm down!_

Okay. I forced my breath to deepen and slow. What did Rosalie do to me while my soul was gone? I had to think like her as best I could. I had to think like a vampire.

What do vampires do? _They drink blood._ While she had my soul, she drank my blood. She drank my blood that tastes better than anything.

But ... but, she said she doesn't drink human blood.

Wait a minute. She always emphasized that she didn't drink _human_ blood.

She said she doesn't drink human blood, but what is a human? That seemed to be important for me to know right now. Well, she drank animal blood. What separated humans from animals?

Oh, no!

The _soul_ separated humans from animals! And she sucked my soul right out of my body. So ...

So, when she sucked my soul out of my body, my body wasn't human any more.

And there was my inert, compliant body, heart beating away, but all the intelligence, all the will, all the fight gone from my eyes, and all that blood just waiting to be taken.

Suddenly, my hands whipped up to my neck, and my fingers quickly traced from my chin back to under my ears as I tried, not so successfully, to control my breathing.

Wouldn't I feel pain from her ... bite? But maybe vampires had this, like, venom, like houseflies, so you don't feel their bite ... until it was too late. Like the girl in _Dracula:_ what was her name? Mina, right? You think she would have realized that somebody bit her, but she never knew.

That's me: Bella-the-Mina.

But my hurried exam didn't reveal any unusual bumps on my neck, so I repeated the whole process more slowly and a little more calmly.

No, no bite marks on my neck.

What a relief!

But, Rosalie's smart. If she did bite me, she'd know I'd look for that on my neck, right? And it would be hard to miss a bite mark on my neck during the daytime. What if somebody just happened to come by? "Got a frisky boyfriend, there, missy?"

Nope, the name's Bella Swan, not Kristen Kuntz, so _no, ain't got no fella. Thanks for rubbing it in._

So she would know this and would take my blood from somewhere not in plain sight, somewhere where noone would look.

I quickly lifted my PJ top and tee over my stomach and felt it ... nothing. My hands flew to my armpits ... nothing. Well, stinky, but no bites.

I, uh, I didn't feel my breasts, because, well ...

I was blushing really hard right about now, but I forced myself to complete the thought.

... because when I changed my tee I'd surely notice a bite mark on my breast, right?

That is, _if_ I ever got to change my tee again. Well, that'd be something to watch, but later, not right now.

No bite marks up top. I felt half-heartedly along my back, just to be sure, but I was just too boney back there. I'm sure I would've felt a bite mark there because my skin was pulled tightly across my back, anyway.

What about my legs? _Lots of blood there._ I took off my PJ bottoms and dropped them on the floor beside the bed. I searched with my fingers feeling, seeing, where my eyes in this darkness couldn't: calves, no; thighs, no; inner thighs, no.

Okay, she didn't bite me.

_What a relief!_

... that was too short lived. The empty pad pressed against where I had just all-too-recently been bleeding copious amounts of blood ... where I had just been bleeding copious amounts of blood that drove her into a frenzy.

My heart _was _beating a mile a minute while I had searched my body for bite marks. But now it was beating even faster and so hard that I could feel it in my chest, pounding away, burning me with heat as the blood rushed everywhere as I thought of it: _her ... her biting me inside there!_

I was now aware of a place where she could bite where _nobody_ would think to look, not even me.

Then I thought about letting it go. Just letting it go, but I couldn't: _I_ _just couldn't. I had to know!_

I slipped back under the covers and moved my hands to my raised hips, very carefully took my panties off and slipped them down my legs.

Just like the time Rosalie rescued me in the snow from my trip to the outhouse, when, after I had screamed out all that pain from the snow in the cabin, Rosalie had put my panties on me, sliding them up my legs, just as I now slid them down my legs and off.

I placed my panties beside me on the bed under the covers and then removed the pad. It came off easily; it was dry. I put it on the panties.

And now I had to look. Now I had to find out.

I was breathing so hard, but no matter how hard or how fast my breaths came, I couldn't get enough air, and I was hot under the blanket, sweating.

_Oh, God!_ I had never done this: I had never touched myself there on purpose; I had never gone _inside._ But I forced my left hand to rest on the hair above my nether lips, and I brought my other hand to probe ...

_Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!_

I felt a twitch and a flash of something, like cold or heat, so I very quickly flipped my body onto its left side, facing the wall — that is, facing away from _everything_ — and curled into a ball, clasping my arms tightly across my stomach, panting open-mouthed into the blanket that covered me.

You know, I just now realized I don't need to know, after all. I _really, really_ don't need to know if Rosalie's taking blood from me. As long as she didn't tell me either way, it was _just fine with me_. She could do _whatever she wanted_ as long as I didn't know about it.

It took me a few moments to unwrap from the ball and regain control of my breathing. When I finally did, I twisted back around and felt for the pad, put it back on, then reached for the panties ...

... that weren't there.

Okay. This was not the time to panic. My shifting around in the bed moved them somewhere. I just needed to stay calm, to find them, and to put them on. That was all. No need to panic about this. I felt around the bed with my hands and my legs.

Nothing.

_Heh_. Wouldn't it be funny if Rosalie walked in right now with me squirming around the bed under the covers without my panties on?

I discovered that now _was_ a perfectly reasonable time to panic.

I threw off the covers and picked up the PJ bottoms: no panties there. I felt under the bed: no panties.

_Why did it have to be so dark now?_

I felt on top of the bed again. _There they were!_ Right where my butt was. _Whew, what relief!_ I have to remember that for the next time I'm checking for vampire bites: _wiggle your butt to find your panties._

I dove back into the bed and covered myself with the blanket. I readjusted the pad and carefully pulled the panties up. Rosalie wasn't here yet, and if I pulled them up quickly I knew with my luck they would rip. I could just imagine explaining that one the next time we were at the outhouse: _Oh, the ripped panties? Well, see, it's like this ..._

Um, yeah: I pulled the panties up carefully ...

... and put them on the wrong way.

_Jeez! Can't a girl get a break here, please?_ So, I took them off again and put my legs through the other way, constantly watching toward where the door was in the darkness as I did this. Then I put on the PJ bottoms, the right way, this time (I checked), and, as I slipped them into place, I saw a door open.

I would like to say that I didn't scream.

That was too close. Too, too close! Rosalie rushed in, but when she saw I wasn't dead, I could feel her visibly relax and then I could almost see a curious look to her posture in the near blackness.

I pulled the blanket over my head and curled up into a ball, but I could still feel her staring at me, and she could probably feel the heat from my blush burn its way through the blanket.

"What?" I demanded. I had every right to scream. If a vampire marched into your house you'd scream, too. Just because I happened to know this vampire didn't change anything one bit! ... and the timing of her entry didn't help at all, either ...

"It's ..." I was going to say: _nothing: just like me,_ but that probably wouldn't stop her staring. "I'm ... I'm fine." I guess I was fine. If she did bite me, I didn't feel faint, so she probably only took a sip or two of blood.

Why was she worried about me, anyway? She had just sucked the soul out of my body and maybe sucked out some blood, too. Then, for some reason, she put my soul back in me. Weren't these more reason to worry over me than just me getting a fright because she walked through the door? I just didn't get it.

But then I got something else. _She was worrying about me. She __cared__ about me._

Okay, whoa, there, Bella: all that happened was that I screamed, and she came over to check on me. That was it. Let's not get carried away here. I mean, let's not get carried away _again._

I heard her turn away from me, but I resolved to stay right here under the covers. Maybe she'd forget about me after a while. Maybe I'd fall asleep. Maybe I'd fall asleep and wake up back home from this surreal dream and return to my plain, boring reality where beautiful vampires didn't suck my soul from my eyes and my blood from my ...

Yeah, it's a lot safer here under the blanket, _I'll stay right here, _I resolved. That would be an easy resolution to keep.

_CLUNK!_

Well, it _was_ easy ... until I heard that large, heavy, and solid sound coming from something hitting the table. It _was_ easy ... until I saw from under the blanket the one-room cabin become brighter and brighter until it was almost as bright as day. I smelt the distinctive, oily smell of kerosene.

That Rosalie! She didn't even give me the chance to be alone forever for a good, proper, sulk. I sighed and folded the blanket back from my head, and was greeted by an amazing sight: Rosalie was dressed as a man! She was wearing a beige trench coat, and cut quite a handsome figure in the now well-lighted room.

That Rosalie: a regular Errol Flynn! So swoontastic!

Um, what?

It wasn't as if I had a leg to stand by my critique: my fashion had been PJs or undies the last few days, and before that? Well, I never really thought much about what I wore, and now, looking at Rosalie, I never wanted to think about how I looked back then, in my previous life that ended a week or so ago. Even though I had no reason to criticize Rosalie, I couldn't help it: me, I had no reason to dress up, but Rosalie wearing a trench coat? Certainly she looked amazing — the collar up gave her almost a rakish air — but why the mannish look? Why did she need to wear a coat at all, anyway?

As Rosalie unbuttoned her trench coat — I just couldn't get over Rosalie in a men's coat — I shifted my thoughts from Rosalie's look and took in the cabin. There were now five kerosene lamps that lit the whole room in a bright light, and on the table was a capacious carpet bag, stenciled with the words "Wells Fargo & co.'s Express". My attention returned to Rosalie, she was wearing that red cable-knit sweater again — or was it a different one? — I could see a red turtleneck shirt underneath that. She also worn form-fitted blue jeans that fit her like a glove, hugging but not squeezing her legs.

It seemed she always looked beautiful, and she always wore beautiful things — or she made the common things she wore look beautiful — and she always did it so effortlessly. It was if she were designed to be beautiful, and everything came together to make that design true, all the time.

She just didn't seem real. Well, you know what I mean, I mean _besides_ being a vampire and all ...

And to prove my point, she casually flipped the coat across the length of the table. It landed neatly draped over the chair near the carpet bag.

"That was just luck!" I exclaimed hotly, sitting up in the bed. "I bet you couldn't do that again!"

Why did she have to be so graceful, too? My every move and gesture felt clumsy and inelegant compared to her grace. It was like she had everything, and I had nothing. Even her self-imposed silence made her better than me: instead of being mute, she was mysterious ... and beautiful ... and graceful ... and everything. I knew it was mean of me, but I hoped that there was something that she didn't do perfectly.

It was mean of me, and Rosalie caught it. She tilted her head to one side, and I could feel the reproach that she didn't say. She didn't need to. I blushed in shame and dropped my eyes. "I'm sorry," I murmured, hating my outburst, hating myself.

I was sure she was going to give me the silent treatment, letting my guilt eat me from the inside out, but she surprised me. I felt her movement and looked up to see her retrieve her coat and then come over to me. I looked up a her towering over me.

"Bet," she stated simply, holding out her right hand.

I looked at her hand and looked at her impassive face.

What would a smart girl do in this case? Was I a smart girl? I think you know the answer to that one already, don't you?

* * *

**A/N: **In this and in the following chapters I am indebted to twilighted-dot-net member planethalia for educating me in the clothing fashions of the 1930s. Any accuracies are hers; any inaccuracies, mine.


	29. The Wager

**Chapter summary:** You know, there should be a 'vampire handbook'. Do's and Don't's. Like: 1. Don't say the 'V' word, 2. Bring spare pads, and 3. Never-never-never bet on anything. Especially a sure-win bet. I wish I had read that handbook before now.

* * *

Rosalie stood over me as I sat on the bed, right hand extended, daring me to bet on the silliest thing: that she could toss her coat across the table and have it land on the chair again. I so wanted to take her up on her offer, just to prove that there was _something_ she couldn't do perfectly twice in a row, but ...

"But ... but I haven't got any money." In fact, I didn't have anything at all to wager. Everything I had came from Rosalie. What could she possibly want from me? What could I possibly offer?

As she tilted her head to one side, raising her offered hand to her chin, tapping her index finger against her lips, I realized there was one thing I did have that she very much desired. I regretted my outburst, yes, but now I regretted what it precipitated, because she may be proud of being a Hale and all, but I had my own pride, too. I knew I wouldn't back down from whatever she was planning. I wasn't a chicken.

It didn't stop me wishing that I could be a chicken now, because I saw crafty look steal across her face as she dropped her hand.

"Sevin secondz." she smirked. A smirk that said that she just couldn't wait for me to back down.

Seven seconds. I wouldn't die if she sucked my blood for seven seconds, would I? I didn't understand why sucking my blood for seven seconds was a wager worth having for her, though. Didn't she just steal my soul and take out blood from my body? From the lack of light outside it seemed that she could have done that for a lot longer than seven seconds. Maybe the blood tasted better with the soul still there? Maybe vampires got a thrill out of sucking the blood out of an aware victim? Maybe ... maybe she wanted me _to know_ that she was sucking out my blood as she did it! I shuddered, but I think I could handle it. All I had to do was count to seven, and it would be over.

I could handle anything for seven seconds, I figured.

But, wait. Why did "seven seconds" sound familiar somehow? Where had I heard "seven seconds" before?

Then I gasped, for I remembered where I had heard, and seen, "seven seconds" before.

...

It was at a Friday Fish Fry. I was fifteen, and it was a nice warm June evening. The older kids had gone inside the town hall, and us younger kids were told to keep the Hell out. So I snuck in.

I was already Nancy Drew, Jr. by then, you see.

I saw them in the basement of the main hall, gathered in a corner. They were drinking, they were talking, they had a phonograph playing peppy music, some of the boys were smoking! I even saw a couple of the girls smoking! I couldn't believe it: how brazen! A few couples where dancing the Charleston (trends trickled in from Back East slowly: this was Ekalaka, and not only did you need to adjust for daylight savings time, but you had to "set your clock back 10 years" as the "Welcome to Ekalaka" sign proudly proclaimed), and there was playing of games. Some of the kids were playing "spin the bottle" ... and some were playing "seven seconds in Heaven".

I didn't know it was called "seven seconds in Heaven" at the time, but I did see, from my concealed position, what happened. Jan Widmann picked Kristen Kuntz and her current beau George Gnass, and pointed to the WC, as George passed Jan, I saw him palm Jan a quarter.

A whole quarter.

I was shocked at how much money so clandestinely changed hands — where did he get all that money? — but I was even more shocked when I saw George follow Kristen into the WC, and close the door.

I almost revealed my presence, but I bit down hard on my scream and covered my mouth to muffle the gasps. My beating heart I couldn't control, and I was afraid the pounding of it would give me away, even though I was all the way across the hall.

Second after second passed, and still the door remained closed. Finally, after forever, Jan began pounding on the door.

"George," he called, barking with laughter, "it's seven seconds, not seventy seconds!"

Still nothing from the closed door, and this attracted the attention of more of the kids, with girls making comments and more boys pounding on the door and laughing.

I felt sick, I was afraid I would faint dead away. _What were they doing in there? Were they holding hands? Were they ... hugging? _I gasped when a new thought occurred to me. _Were they ... oh, my God! ... were they __kissing__?_

They _couldn't _be kissing! You could only kiss _after _you were married.

The door opened with a bang, and George came out first, looking as proud as a peacock. Then came Kristen. She looked slightly embarrassed and her hair was in ever-so-slight disarray from what I thought at the time was perfection, and her ankle-length dress (one of those expensive ones straight from Sears: Joan Bradley's Fast Color for a whole dollar!) was just the slightest bit askew.

In my nervousness, I knocked a book off the table I was leaning against, and the bigger kids attention shifted toward where I would've been. 'Would have been' because I never knew I could run that fast — I think I ran Rosalie-fast — and for the rest of that fish fry I did not leave Pa's side, even though he tried to shoo me away, claiming he was boring me with talk of work.

Why is it that grown-ups need to stand around with a beer in their hand with people that they've been working with all day and talk about work?

I didn't care. Law and order in Carter County was a much safer topic to be listening to and to be thinking about than what I had just seen.

...

Rosalie didn't need to take my blood for seven seconds, for she knew she could have that any time she wanted. All she needed to do is to suck out my soul, and she could have much blood for as long as she liked.

No, Rosalie _wanted to have her way with me_ for those seven seconds.

I swallowed hard and looked up to her. She was looking down at me, waiting for my answer.

She wanted to have her way with me, she wanted me to acquiesce, and she was using my slip to make me agree to it.

But ... but wasn't this what I wanted? I looked at her again, and then I looked away, trying, unsuccessfully, to hide my blush. _God! Why did she have to say my blush is a sexual invitation!_

_It __isn't__, ... okay?_

I didn't actually know what I wanted. I wanted her to like me. I wanted her to love me. But what did that involve? I mean, what did that involve more than "Oh, I like you." or "Oh, I love you." Maybe, I thought, she'd, you know, hold me, like when I was crying before? Maybe she'd smile at me sometimes? Maybe she'd be nice to me, kind to me, like when I got the royal treatment for lunch today ...

... just before the grand interrogation,

... just before the soul sucking.

I didn't know. Thinking about what I wanted from her made me realize that _I didn't know_ what I wanted from her ... what I wanted from ... from ... from I don't know what to call this. I thought there was nothing between us, but then why would she want "seven seconds" if she didn't care about me in any way? Did she care about me? I don't know. _I don't know!_

All the other girls in town my age would know. They all had beaux, they were all finishing school to settle down and to get married and to raise a family and to take over their family farms. But not me. The whole idea of "husband" and "babies" was just something I never really considered. The reason I "graduated" early — well, actually left school early — wasn't because of a fella, it was because I already knew more than all the teachers there did, and I wasn't interested in playing the games that the other kids in school played. It wasn't that I didn't like other people, just the opposite: they didn't like me. I was too quiet, and when I did speak, I always said the wrong thing. And I wasn't good at pretending to play along in the gossipy, and, well, just _mean_ games that the other girls in school played. And the boys? Well, it would be too easy, and actually wrong, to say they only had one thing on their minds, but they never really interested me, and, honestly, they weren't really interested in me, either ... well, they _mostly_ weren't interested in me. There was that one time last April.

...

Pa was always going to the baseball games: the "Carter County Bulldogs" games. And, of course, I had to go along with him or I'd get the "show your support" lecture, and he'd make me go anyway. Not that I'd ever play baseball or softball ... are you kidding? _Here, Bella, swing this stick at this projectile moving at high speed toward your head. _Or: _here, Bella, catch this projectile moving toward your head at high speed._ No, thank you. But I had to watch the games, "showing" my "support" for the local league.

Frank Widmann, Jan's younger brother, was at bat. He was one year younger than me, but he looked older, or I looked younger, or both. He was a wiry kid, almost skinny, but when his bat connected with the ball ... well, Amelia Earhart could have used that ball to fly the Atlantic. When he hit, he hit the ball hard, and the pitchers respected that in him.

Well, this time he struck out. He didn't swing at the obviously bad pitches — he had the rep that he'd swing at anything, but he didn't — but he still swung a lot, and this time he struck out. Instead of returning to the dugout, he trotted over to the stands ... to where we were sitting.

"Sheriff Swan," Frank touched his cap to Pa and sat next to me, looking out at the diamond.

"So," he said, "it's Bella, right?"

I nodded, confused. I looked over at Pa. He was watching the game, but he looked a bit nervous ... and a bit relieved. I filed that image away to think about later.

Of course, Frank wasn't looking at me, so he couldn't see my _yes, _so I had to say it out loud.

"How're you? Enjoying the game?" he asked politely.

I didn't bother to answer the second question. _Watching baseball: _ that was right up there with watching paint dry, but I answered his first one, to return the politeness: "Um, I'm fine, thanks." Then I waited.

For nothing. See, that the thing about boys in Ekalaka, and I'd guess about boys anywhere. You can't hold a conversation with them. It's like they're from a different world. I guess it wasn't his fault. I guess it wasn't the fault of boys in general, either ... or girls. The fault was mine. I just didn't relate to anybody. Nobody held my interest until the Hales, no, the Cullens, came to town. I couldn't relate to other people, because they had nothing interesting or smart to say or to listen to. I could just see them tune out as soon as I opened my mouth to say anything that wasn't trite. But then Edward came along, and boy, was he interesting and smart! And interested in me. And then Rosalie came along, and she seems interested in me, for some reason which I don't understand, because if I thought Edward was smart ... well, with Rosalie I found out what smart really was! At least with Edward I thought I could hold my own and not feel so stupid, so inadequate, so enthralled, like I feel around Rosalie.

I didn't relate to people; no, I related to _vampires_ of all things. There's only one reason for that; only one explanation: _it's because I'm a freak!_

But I didn't know that yet in the baseball stands, and Frank was just sitting there, so I had to volunteer something.

"I'm sorry you struck out ..." and then I winced. _Nice, _I thought. That sure was great of me to show him in a bad light, wasn't it?

But Frank seemed not to mind. "Ah, you hit some, you miss some. The thing for me is, you've just got to keep swinging."

Then he had to go: the inning changed hands, the "Custer County Cowboys" were at bat now, and Frank played third base for the home team. _Go Bulldogs! _Pa shouted something about a double play. I guess that was a good thing, so I smiled with him.

I wondered about Frank, but, less than a week later, he was with Susie Swanson, who was one year younger than him. Susie Swanson! As if she had the brains to ... no, I shouldn't think that, because they looked happy together. I guess Frank struck out with me, but he kept swinging.

Besides that one incident, I didn't think much about boys. I had other things to do with my life, specifically: help Pa. He had a big county to run, and he couldn't do that and keep house. I told him a year earlier I was quitting school to help, and, boy, did he throw a conniption! If I knew he was going to react like that, I could have sold tickets. He pushed me off my plan until I was sixteen, but then I came home anyway, before my junior year started. What was he going to do? Throw me in the clink like he threatened? I wasn't truant anymore, and besides, he'd have three times the work: taking care of me in the county jail, and then taking care of the house and the horses on top of all the county work.

And what was I going to do with a high school diploma? Get a job? In Ekalaka? Like they needed to see a lamb skin: you could do the work, or you couldn't, and no piece of paper changed that. Besides, there was the Depression on: nobody was getting jobs anywhere these days, diploma or no.

...

Yeah, I wasn't like anybody else my age: I wasn't settling down, because I had already settled down, but not like what they were planning. But that also meant I had no idea about situations like this. I didn't even know a situation like this one even existed, and I'm not talking about Rosalie being a vampire, and all ... although that certainly made things very different, too, I bet.

_I bet._ There I go again, getting myself into more trouble, as always.

I needed time to figure out what was happening. But she wasn't giving me any time now. That look in her eyes was saying something different than "let's be nice", and it wasn't saying it patiently. I didn't know exactly what it was saying, but I knew how it made me feel. It made me feel a little bit scared. It made me feel that she was going to be a bit more forceful than holding my hand. Okay, maybe a lot more forceful, like _having her way with me_ ... and that? Too fast. This was going too far too fast, and I wasn't ready for what she was going to be doing to me if she was going to be winning this bet. That is, doing whatever it was she was going to be doing to me in those seven seconds. The image of the slightly rumpled and dazed Kristen coming out of the WC flashed in front of me.

I blushed harder, stood up and stepped away from her, starting to shake my head in a _no_ when I saw Rosalie's reaction: her smile turned from crafty to triumphant. The smile said one word to me — _chicken!_ — and I saw red.

"Fine!" I shouted to her, "you're on!"

The smile got wider.

_Whoops!_ What had I just done? I couldn't back out now, so she had better have been lucky just that one time, and not again, and I had better have some very big compensation to make her pay for putting me in this position.

"Wait a minute!" I exclaimed, and she paused, jaw hardening, looking like she was ready to fight me. I was _willing to bet_ she was thinking I was going to back out, that I was going to go back on my word.

_'Willing to bet'?_ Actually, I was already in a bet, wasn't I? They had a term for the likes of me — going in for wager after wager, throwing away good money after bad — in Butte at the casinos and saloons: _sucker._ That's what I am: Bella-the-sucker. Well, I was all in, so she'd better commit, too.

"What are you putting in for this bet? It _had_ _better_ be good!" I wanted to sound fierce. I actually thought I did sound fierce, but Rosalie only crinkled her eyes, like I had said the funniest thing in the world. _Oh, listen to the cute little girl!_ I could just hear her thoughts, and that only made me angrier.

Which only made Rosalie even more amused. _Hmmphf!_

She beckoned to me, and I sighed and followed her to the table; I might as well see what she had to offer. She then opened the carpet bag and pulled out a book, showing me the cover: _Austen's Collected Works,_ R. W. Chapman, _ed_. I gasped and reached out for it, but it was gone, along with Rosalie.

She was on the other side of the table, clasping the book to her breast.

_"Mine!"_ she growled.

I couldn't believe it. "But you said you were getting it for me ..." I pleaded.

She shook her head _no._ Really, she hadn't actually said that, but she said she was getting my book before she stole my soul, and I had asked for _Pride and Prejudice, _and here were all Austen's works. This wasn't fair.

Rosalie put the book on the table, standing it up there with her hand resting on the top of the book. "Bet," she said smugly. She looked so confident, seeing my reaction to what she was offering, I was sure she thought that I would knuckle under.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Nothing doing, Rosalie," she looked surprised at this, and I felt pleased at being able to throw her off, even a little bit. "That's not good enough: the whole bag, or the bet's off. The whole bag, and everything in it."

I had seen there were more books in there. She may have been planning to give me the book in her hand until my slip, or she may have been planning to keep it as some kind of incentive and give me another book in the bag. Well, now she'd just have to give them all to me if she wanted to make a play at this game.

That is, make a play at me. I realized I had just valued myself to a bag of books.

Great.

... I hope they're really good books.

Rosalie hadn't answered yet. Her own eyes were narrowed.

_Ha!_ Now we're talking! If she had to think about it, then there must be something in that bag that made the bet worth it. I crossed my arms and raised my eyebrow, feeling a bit cocky. Two could play at chicken, and Rosalie was the one in the pot now.

Her face hardened, and she finally nodded, reluctantly, it appeared. I guess a certain smug and superior vampire doesn't like to be called out in her own game.

"Well, okay, then!" I was so pleased, "let's see what you're putting up: show me what's in that bag."

She liked that even less, but she knew the deal: you put your money on the table or you walk away. She wasn't walking away from this one. She couldn't: a Hale wouldn't do that.

I finally knew I had a hold over her: her Hale pride was my lever, my button to push. I worked very hard not to let my gloating surface, but her narrowed eyes didn't miss a thing. She fumed as she walked over to the bag — her bet didn't go the way she planned, now, did it! — and an involuntary smirk plastered itself across my face.

Rosalie reached into the bag, and her angry expression melted into a pleased one. She pulled a book out and put it on the table. It looked scholarly. It was also written in a language that didn't use our alphabet. The letters looked the same, but looked very, very different: Σαπφώ. I did recognize what looked like the letter 'a' in that strange writing at least, but the other 'letters'? One was a square without a bottom; another, a circle with a line going through it from top to bottom. The first letter was a funny 'E' that looked more like an 'M' on its side. Oh, there was a letter at the end that looked like a curvy 'w'. Yay.

"Um." I offered. Now it was her turn to smirk. She reached in again, searching with her hand, and pulled out the next book, putting it on the table.

If the last book was in a strange alphabet, this one wasn't. Wasn't in an alphabet, that is, that I could see. It had a horizontal line with squiggles dangling beneath it: कामसूत्र. Was it written in Vampire? Did they have their own language and writing? I looked up at Rosalie in despair ... I was losing this bet big time. My look must have been exactly what she wanted to see, because she returned her attention to the bag with a very pleased look.

Then she pulled out two more books: one had a lot of German writing and its title mentioned the other one, written in Latin: the _Principia Mathematica_.

Math. Ugh!

I hoped she hadn't gotten the German book for me. Sure, I was of German stock, but I didn't read or speak a word of it. I wonder if she'd hold that against me? I wonder if she's be angry with me when she gave me that book to read, and I would be forced to confess that I didn't understand any of it.

Her hand reached into the bag again and pulled out the next book. It was entitled _American Sign Language_ from Gallaudet University. _Why? _But I didn't have time to ponder that because she pulled out three more books. They were text books: Western Civilization, Algebra I & II and Geometry.

The first one, the history book, I could deal with, but the other two? Math, again. I hated math in school. It looked like that didn't matter to Rosalie, however. What, was I going to go to Rosalie Hale High School, for goodness sake?

Rosalie then pulled out two more books from the bag: _At-Home Remedies for Common Aliments _— _Har, har!_ That Rosalie! Did she think I got sick all the time? — and another very thick school book: _Literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry and drama. _ Well, that one looked interesting, at least.

That left two books in the bag. I looked up at her. "Well?" I said. She looked at me and then reached in, pulling out a very thick book: _Webster's._

Talk about your anticlimax.

Then she reached in again and pulled out the last book, placing it on the table. The cover of the book was a dark blue, and the title was embossed in gold: _The Holy Bible._

My mouth fell open. Talk about your anti-anticlimax.

"Oh, my God!" I exclaimed. Rosalie looked at me in askance.

Then I realized the irony: I had just said "Oh, my God!" on seeing the Bible.

_Jeez!_

"Well, you know what I mean ..." I explained, but it looked like she was having a hard time keeping a straight face. Of course that brought on a fit of giggles in me, but it was all just too much. _Rosalie, the vampire, _presented _me_ a _Bible_, of all things. What, was she my guardian vampire after all? Was she making sure I was going to be walking the straight and narrow? Here she was stealing my soul and drinking my blood, but she had to make sure I was a good little girl?

Too much. Just too much.

But, wait a minute. "Wait a minute!" Yes, I'm good at speaking my thoughts. "Was this supposed to be for you or for me?" She looked at me steadily.

_"You_ were going to read this?" She raised both her eyebrows and dropped them, a subtle nod from my own mysterious Rose ... Rosalie, I mean. I couldn't believe it. _A vampire_ reading the _Bible?_

I wish there was a pig nearby, so I could check to see if it had just sprouted wings.

The Bible _had _to be for her. I never had any interest before in reading the Good Book, and I didn't have any interest now. I mean, really! Come on!

_Hmm, I'm bored ... oh! I know what I'll do! I'll read the Bible!_

Not likely.

My name isn't Bella-the-Bible-scholar. And I was the _sheriff's _daughter, not the _Priest's_ daughter, and if I were, wouldn't that be quite the scandal! Fr. Krebsbach wouldn't be able to give the blessing before the meal at Friday Fish Fries, given that he had this natural daughter, and all.

And I actually preferred the last name of Swan to Krebsbach, so that was another good reason not to read the Bible.

So, looking over the booty, I had to admit that they were pretty slim pickings. Only the anthology on literature looked interesting, even though it looked like a school text book. So, why did Rosalie grimace when I told her all the books or no bet? I looked at the books again as she began to put them away.

She was putting the foreign books away first.

"You know, Rosalie, I can't read those." I told her, but she didn't look up at me: she kept putting away the books, except the Austen one, and came over to me, right hand extended again, and a firmness in her eye.

"No deal," I said, but she still held her hand out. She looked down at the Austen book and then to me.

I wasn't that much of a pushover ... well, maybe I was, but ...

"No, Rosalie: no deal unless ..." and I crossed my arms and smirked at her. She waited.

"No deal unless you read me those books," I said, pointing to the bag with my chin, "and you tell me what they say."

Rosalie's hand was still out, but her lips pressed into a thin line at that. Then she did withdraw her hand and then cross her own arms, after setting the Austen book down on the table. She paused, thinking.

I grinned. I had hit the jackpot. There was something in those books important to her. If they were important to her, then they had some value. Some value high enough for her to consider the whole bet seriously.

Win or lose, I would find out. I had my new button to press — her precious Hale pride — and I used it now to make the secrets of those books part of the bet. And, if I should lose, I would find a way to use it again to get those secrets anyway.

... that is, if I lost, if I survived whatever she did to me in seven seconds.

Seven seconds. It couldn't be too bad, could it? Or ... could it?

I would soon be finding out ... that is, _if_ I lost, and _if_ Rosalie accepted my side of the bet.

She did. She nodded her head and extended her hand to me again.

Well, there was no backing out now, and I had no more wiggle room. I took her hand, felt the iciness of it, and pumped once.

But she didn't let go. She was looking at me right in the eye.

"Gudt bet," she said. Was there a tinge of ... pride? in her voice?

Well, okay, if this big city vampire from Back East has a measure of respect for this Montana girl, then I would take it.

_Vampires._ That whole group was, like, "Wow! Look, the girl can put on her own boots! Isn't she amazing?" It was just so odd what they found admirable. Maybe I should take up chewing gum so I could show them I could do that and walk at the same time.

"Well, okay," I said, taking my hand back, after she held it much too long for a handshake, "let's have you throw that coat so I can get those books. I'm gonna have a lot of reading to do!"

I wasn't moving things along just to avoid receiving the compliment. It wasn't like I had any issues with self-image; I knew exactly what I was (not). I was just moving things along, that's all.

Rosalie smiled at my confidence, though. So that was nice. It was a small smile, and almost wistful. _One day, _I promised myself, one day she'd smile because she was happy, and only that, and not have a hundred other sad things on her mind.

She did one of her elegant waves, indicating that I should go back to the bed, which I did without question. It wasn't hard to remember the last time she moved me out of the way — the cabin almost burned down! — so I moved to get out of the way of whatever fireworks were sure to come.

Uh, oh! She wasn't going to pull some magic out of thin air to repeat the impossible, was she? As I sat on the bed, I felt a bit of nervousness creep over my confidence. I really needed to win this bet, not so much for the books, but so that _she _didn't win the bet.

She stood the Jane Austen book up on the table by the chair where the coat had hung, and placed the carpet bag on that chair's seat. Then she moved away from the table toward the door, and for a second I thought she was going to go outside, but she stopped by the door and looked right at me. She looked right at me, not at the table. Then she folded the coat lengthwise twice, lifted two fingers to her eyes and moved them to the coat, looking at me the whole time. I guess she was saying: _keep your eyes on the coat._

I tried, but that's hard to do when you're mesmerized by a vampire staring right at you. Her right hand grasped the coat by the collar, moved across her chest and then flicked.

The coat disappeared in a blur. I couldn't follow it, I just followed her right arm pointing out straight now toward the table. I hear a loud _thump_ and saw the book fly up, summersaulting in the air. I noticed the coat was fanned out, standing straight upside down right over the chair with its collar anchored to the chair-back. As the coat drifted back down, the book landed on top of the carpet bag. When everything settled, the coat was draped over the chair that was leaning back, pushed at that odd angle by the force of the coat hitting it and kept from falling over by the table, and the book was resting on top of the bag.

The whole time I could feel Rosalie's eyes boring holes into me. I looked back at her. She hadn't even bothered to look over to where the miracle had occurred; she was looking right at me.

I swallowed, unnecessarily, because my throat was dry. "Umm." I said as I pointed over to the table. She didn't break her stare for an eternity, but then she did look over, and when she saw her handiwork, her expression soured.

It was if she was angry that the impossibility she had just done wasn't absolutely perfect. She stomped her foot, and I felt the slightest of tremors ... that shook the whole cabin, that maybe shook the whole world, but shook everything in just the right way that the chair fell back to its upright position and so that the book disappeared into the carpet bag. _Goodbye, Jane Austen, _I thought ruefully.

I think I might have to write a letter to China to apologize to that family that lost their house to outer space when Rosalie stomped her foot just now.

But then I looked back at Rosalie, and every trace of humor left my head. She _was_ angry, and it looked like she was going to take it out on me ... for the next seven seconds. She started toward me, and she wasn't walking: she was gliding. Her feet didn't seem to touch the ground as she floated toward me. And she was limned, but not in light, but in darkness. It seemed that she was sucking the light right out of the air around her. She was pure vampire now. She was the most terrifying thing I ever saw. She was the Angel of Death, and she was coming toward me.

I stood up from the bed and took a step back from her — as if that would do anything — but it did: my eyes were fixed on hers that started to glow again, but my feet weren't as sure as they should be. I stumbled, falling backward, and my arms flew above my head, trying to stop my fall.

And then Rosalie was on me. She was right in my face and one arm held the back of my head while the other encircled my lower back. I drew in a gasp of honeysuckle-and-rose scented air and waited for the bite to come.

But it didn't.

She twirled me around quickly and set my back against the wall adjacent to the bed ... away from the stove.

I felt the heat of it now, on my back and on the back of my head. I had been backing right into the stove, and my fall would have done serious damage, if Rosalie hadn't caught me. I looked at her now with the shock of the realization of what she had just done, but her face was still set in hard lines.

_"I wihhh,"_ she had run out of air.

So I had to say it for her: "You win," I looked away from her intense, glowing eyes. Did I want to know what was going to happen to me next? Not really, but I'd rather take that than facing the nothingness of my soul being sucked away.

I looked back at her, not into her eyes, and admitted defeat: "You win; I lose."

* * *

**A/N:** Some places it's called "Seven Minutes in Heaven"; some places it's called "Seven Seconds in Heaven". C'mon, folks, the girl's recollection is from 1932: seven minutes would invite the possibility of ... *gasp* ... kissin'! We can't have _that_ in _this story,_ now, can we?

**A/N:** Kristen's dress is the blue one (top row, third from left) in Sears Robuck catalog viewable here in the 1930s section of costumes-dot-org.


	30. The Promise

**Chapter summary:** She fell for it. Humans, with their skin temperature, iris dilation, and heart rate can be so easy to read and to manipulate. Maybe I'm starting to understand this inscrutable being? But to be sure, _she _will start to comprehend herself. Starting tonight.

* * *

"You win; I lose," I said, backed against the wall, breathing her honeysuckle-and-rose scent, looking at her regal chin, not daring to look at her eyes burning with a fire of their own ... a soul-sucking fire.

She stepped back from me, finally giving me a little space to breathe, a little space to think, a little space to take in more of her. I saw her face in full. I expected it to be wreathed in victory. It wasn't. She didn't look smug or victorious or gloating; instead, she looked very, very determined.

Why? She just won the bet. Why was it that she looked determined, like it was she that would be going through an ordeal? She had won; she could do whatever she wanted for a whole seven seconds. What was so hard for her about that?

She held her hand out to me, palm facing me, meaning, _wait, _I guessed. She looked like she was going somewhere? Where?

"Rosalie," I asked — how long would she be gone? I didn't know, but she had been gone for maybe a few hours, and I couldn't stand by for a few hours more, besides the fact that I would probably be asleep by then — "you're going somewhere, right?"

She nodded, looking puzzled.

"Before you go, could I have a drink of water first?" Having my soul sucked out, and then put back in, made me thirsty.

She nodded again, got the cup, went outside with it, came back in, scooped out some boiling water from pot and then came to me, extending the cup to me.

I looked inside the cup, there were chunks of snow melting in the water. I would bet that the water was at a perfect temperature for me to drink, but it seemed, now, my betting history wasn't all that good.

I covered her fingers on the cup with mine and looked to her.

"Would you please stay until after I finish the water?" I was afraid that as soon as she handed me the cup, she would disappear in a blur to wherever she was going.

She nodded, though, took a step back, allowing me to drink. I sat down on the bed. I was being brave, but the dread of the coming ... whatever ... was taking its toll. My legs weren't shaking, but I could feel them vibrating. Sitting down seemed like a good idea right now.

I started to drink the water, watching Rosalie. She went to the door.

I gasped and shouted: _"Rosal..."_ and then I coughed, choking on the water.

Her eyebrows became stormy, and she held up one finger impatiently with one hand while making waving vertical motions with the other. Waving motions that said _relax!_

My eyes pleaded for her to come back quickly, as I couldn't find the words to put together to ask her this. That is, ask her with any coherency, or without sounding too desperate.

Because that's what I was: too desperate. I was scared she would walk away, become this scary, imperious, impersonal monster, and come back to me in this new form to do whatever she was going to do to me for those now more and more dreaded seven seconds.

My eyes pleaded, but her eyes rolled. She gave me a _grow up_ grimace and left.

_Grow up, _was what her look said. That's what she thought of me: a little cry-baby.

... because that's what I was, too. Where was that strong girl that I had promised myself I'd be? Did she keep that when she sucked out my soul?

I looked down at the half-finished cup of water. I wondered if I let myself cry, would I fill the cup? Yes, I would: fill it to overflowing. I put the cup to my lips, tilted my head back, and took as big a gulp as I could. It was difficult swallowing past the lump in my throat. I took another big gulp and finished off the cup.

Rosalie returned. She held the plate of left-over steak in her hand, showed it to me, and headed toward the stove.

"Rosalie, no, please, I don't want that right now." That stopped her. She looked at me.

"You needt to eat," she stated through gritted teeth. She was being commanding. I guess my little 'what humans need to survive' lecture to her had really affected her. But I couldn't eat, not now.

"No, Rosalie, it's just ... that is, I really ..." I was stumbling over my stutters. "I just can't eat anything right now. I just can't." I was hungry, but my stomach, empty, but full of butterflies, would push back out anything I forced down now. Water was about all I could handle right now.

My stuttery argument didn't please her, but it looked like it convinced her. She gave me an unhappy look, but went back to the door. She held up one finger and waited.

I nodded. She opened the door to go, but I called out to her, "Rosalie?"

She raised an eyebrow, standing by the opened door.

"Could I have another cup of water, please?" I asked.

She closed the door and came to me, holding out her hand for the cup. I gave it to her, and she disappeared out the door with the cup and the plate.

I was confused: why didn't an animal scavenge the food on the plate? Leaving food out in the open in the wild ... that didn't seem wise. I had met some wolves already; didn't she say there were mountain lions around, too? Leaving steak out ... wouldn't that just call all sorts of wild animals here?

She came back in, scooped out some water from the pot, came to me and handed off the cup.

She went to the door and opened it. "Rosalie?" I called again.

She closed the door firmly. "What!" she growled. Her tone sounded like she was losing patience.

I looked down. I guess it wasn't the best idea to be irritating her just before she collected her winnings ... _from me._ But still ...

"After I finish this cup of water," I was starting to blush, "... could I, like ... ?"

"Goh?" Rosalie finished my question.

I nodded, shamefacedly.

I looked back at Rosalie. She was smirking at me, her armed crossed in her superior look. She nodded smugly.

Well, at least I amused her. At least she wasn't angry with me.

Rosalie gave me one of her elegant waves, so I drank the water, and then stood up from the bed.

"I'm done." I couldn't delay any more.

She came to me and took the cup, setting it down in the sink, then went outside grabbed the bucket and quickly filled it with embers. We were flying through the forest before I knew she picked me up. We were in the steaming, lighted outhouse before I saw her do the routine. Was time speeding up, or was she hurrying things along?

... or both?

I pulled down my panties and removed the pad. And I smiled.

"Look!" I don't think I've ever showed my pad to anyone. I don't think I've ever been so pleased to do it.

I was now. I opened my pad to Rosalie, but she took a quick step back.

Well, okay, waving what was just _there_ in somebody's face ... not the most ... well, I guess I shouldn't have done that. I guess my excitement overcame my ladylike tendencies.

_What ladylike tendencies?_ you ask. My answer: _shut up, okay?_

Besides, I had a reason for doing this. "No, Rosalie, look: no more blood. I'm done with my period! You can talk now!"

Rosalie took a cautious step forward and held out her hand. I let her take the pad from me. She looked at it and shook her head. _What?_ My incredulous eyes must have communicated my thoughts, or perhaps she just read my mind, because she pointed at the middle of the pad. I looked.

"What?" I asked. "I don't see a thing!"

She brought the candle down from the frame and held it level to the pad and pointed again.

Two teeny-tiny-tinsy dots. Two nearly invisible dots. Two nothing dots.

I opened my mouth to shout my disbelief, but the look on Rosalie's face froze me. She looked more pained than I did.

My breath escaped in a huff. "Okay," I sighed in defeat, looking at her defeated face. "You will start talking with me tomorrow, right? That is, when my period's over?"

God, I missed her voice. I missed having the ability to talk and to listen, to ask and to respond. I missed the give and take. God, I missed that. I couldn't stand any more of this one-sided nothing.

She shrugged.

_She shrugged?_

"What does that mean?" I demanded, mimicking her shrug. "Why wouldn't you talk to me tomorrow? Won't you start talking with me again tomorrow?"

She looked at me, and spoke the words carefully, "Nawt if yourh dead."

I sat down on the opened seat, thinking ... and then peeing.

Then I looked up to her. "You're not going to hurt me tonight ... during the seven seconds? You're not going to kill me, are you?"

She shrugged again.

"Rosalie," I glared, I had had enough of the shrugging, "you can't do this. You have to tell me if you're going to kill me or hurt me."

Rosalie glared right back.

I waited for her answer, but it looked like that's the answer she was going to give. But I didn't accept that.

"Because if you are, then I have to ..." Rosalie held up her hand.

I stood up, glaring. She sat me back down and washed me, impassively, as if my life weren't hanging in the balance.

"Rosalie, you _have_ to tell me." I said quietly into her ear ... quietly but insistently ... as she bent me over. "Are you planning on killing or hurting me tonight?"

She stepped back from washing me, shook her head _no_, and handed me a towelette.

_What was so God damned hard about admitting that!_ I fumed as I cleaned and dried myself. She handed me a pad, and I lost my control over my temper. I didn't say anything, but I did breathe out an exasperated sigh. _Two tiny not-even-hardly-there dots and she gives me a new pad! As if I needed it!_

And then I thought about the American Sign Language book.

Oh, my G... no. No! She wasn't going to talk to me ever again? Was that the plan? I opened my mouth to ask about this, but she handed me the tin full of lime and nodded toward where I had sat.

I sighed again. She was purposely ignoring my concerns; she was deflecting me. I spread the lime, and I thought about throwing the tin can in after, just out of spite, but I gritted my teeth and handed it back to her. My angry action might hurt me more than it might hurt her. After all, she didn't need to go, that I could see, and I could just see her pushing me in after the can ... into the can ... to get the ...

Oh, never mind! I'm just too pissed to be making jokes right now.

And _don't you dare say: oh, Bella, you're pissed? That's funny, 'cause you just p..._

_I said don't say it!_

Rosalie took the can, extinguished the candle, and we were flying through the forest.

"Rosalie, you have to ..." I began angrily, but then I stopped.

I stopped because we stopped ... right in the middle of the forest. Rosalie was looking down at me, her eyes weren't friendly. I looked away. I guess she _didn't_ have to do anything, after all. I wasn't interested in taking a snow swim by moonlight right now.

"Never mind," I whispered. I risked a glance back at her, her eyes were narrowed at me. I looked away again, but the trees started flying by again in that comfortingly impossibly fast blur that they did when Rosalie was running. We were inside the cabin as soon as I saw it race toward us.

"Rosalie, will you please do me a favor?" I asked. I figured instead of telling her what she _had_ to do, asking her for a favor might be better. Besides, she had asked favors of me. Fair's fair.

But I didn't wait for her response, either. "Will you tell me, you know, when you're about to kill me?"

Rosalie was right beside the door when I asked her. She was there, then she was gone; the door swaying open. A second later I heard a prolonged scream from a great distance in the forest that shook the very air, and then she blurred right in front of me, right in my face, her eyes pitch black, shouting at me:

_"I'll try!"_ she shouted, and then her words blurred together like she just had: _"I'lltryilltryilltryilltry! I'LL ..."_ She coiled back, looking just like that wolf did when it leapt at me, but then she seemed to implode. She finished with a sad, quiet tone: "... try."

I stood stunned. No, in shock. Not understanding anything. No surprises there. I watched her standing a foot from me, the opened doorway seeping in cold Belle Fourche air, wherever the Hell that was. She wasn't breathing; I hadn't seen her breathe in during her tirade, but now I saw her eyes mellow and then brighten to a yellow-gold as her rigid stance did _not_ mellow to anything more relaxed.

I had thought carefully what I was about to say next during my trip back to the cabin where I didn't end up swimming in the snow.

"Rosalie," her eyes went black again — just like that — but I had to say it, "I have to ask you to promise me that. I have to ask you to promise me that you'll try to tell me before you kill me ... because ... because I have to do something very important just before I die." I was going to say: _I have to tell you something just before I die,_ but Rosalie would then know what I had to say. She was the smart one here, after all.

My eyes were looking at her feet as I said this, as I asked this of her. I looked back up into her face. Anger flashed across the face with the pitch black eyes. It looked she was going to slap me, and I flinched, but I held my place.

So did she. She thought for a second, and her face settled into a state of calm. Perhaps it was resigned? She carefully took my left hand in her right, then brought up her left and held my hand in both of hers, squeezed it very gently, and said, very distinctly: "I promise," through clenched teeth and put my hand back at my side.

I had asked her to promise, and she had given me that promise. But why did it feel that something happened that was much more than that? When she said: "I promise" it felt like she wasn't just saying, "I promise," but she was saying something about forever ... that she was promising _me_ something forever.

I looked down again, realizing that I had just asked everything from her, somehow ... and that she had just given it to me.

"Thank you," I whispered. It was all I could say.

Even with this realization, it still seemed that I had only glimpsed at a small part of what this meant.

'Seven seconds' was turning from a scary game the older kids played to something much more profound.

I shivered. Rosalie looked toward the door. She walked over and closed it and then pointed to the sink. _Huh?_ I raised my eyebrow, so she came over to me and held out her hand to me. I took it. She walked me over to the sink and got out the tooth brush and powder. _Oh!_ I hadn't brushed since ... when? breakfast? I had forgotten to do that after lunch, and I woke up with stinky cotton mouth, but it was so far down my priority list, it just ...

But Rosalie remembered. She remembered for me. I brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth with the Listerine she handed me. After that, she motioned me to the bed. I went there and watched her as she stoked the fire in the stove. She went back to the door and held up two fingers, so I nodded.

She opened the door, but then turned back to me, tilted her head to one side, considering, then straightened up and spoke these words:

"Youh are strong; youh can do zhis."

And she was gone.

That was _so_ encouraging. I suddenly felt not very strong. I suddenly felt I couldn't do 'this', whatever it was. I looked around the cabin, helplessly, feeling trapped, feeling alone, and feeling not just a little bit scared.


	31. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

**Chapter summary:** She said she wasn't going to torture me. I thought I could last through anything for seven seconds. But not this. Not this.

* * *

I hate her. I hate her!

Oh, God! _I HATE HER SO MUCH!_

I was curled up in a ball of the floor, my eyes red, my face flushed, and my cheeks? Stained. Stained and stinging from the salt of my tears. But that pain was nothing to what my throat felt. I had been begging, screaming at her, to stop, to please stop.

But she wouldn't stop.

Rosalie stooped down.

"No, Rosalie, please," I whispered, my voice cracking. She started to turn me toward the ... "NO!" I screamed until I couldn't scream any more.

She picked me up, and I clung to her desperately, fearing what she might do, fearing that she might make me face _it_ again, but fearing more that she might leave me. She brought me to the bed and set me down.

"Rosalie, no. Rosalie, please don't leave me. Please." I begged, but my words didn't touch her. Nothing touched her, for she had turned into this cold distant monster that even my worst fears couldn't have conjured. She looked down at me as if she were regarding a cockroach and shook her head in an imperious and distant _no._

I lunged at her: "NO!" I screamed again and grabbed hold of her sweater. I would _not_ let go of her sweater. I would _force_ her to stay.

Rosalie moved and twisted in my grasp faster than my hands knew what was happening, but I wouldn't let go of that sweater. _I wouldn't!_

I didn't. In two quick movements she was out of the sweater and had me tucked in bed under the blanket, sweater in my bewildered grasp.

"Hunting. 'Bye." The monster spoke these distant words. She knew exactly what these words _weren't_ doing to me. They weren't killing me, that's what they were doing.

She had to torture me tomorrow, too, you see.

"Rosa..." I was talking to the air; she was gone.

No.

I cradled her red sweater in my arms and buried my face in it.

"Rosalie, please don't go," I whispered into her sweater. I just couldn't believe she was gone, so I talked to the only thing that remained of her. I talked into her sweater, breathing in _her scent,_ the scent of honeysuckle and rose as if it were the air that I needed to breath, curled up into a ball, facing the wall, facing away from the cabin and everything in it, ... facing away from _it._

She was gone.

I hate her. I hate her so much. Oh, God, I hate her.

"I hhhhhhh..." _What was I saying?_

"I hhhhhhhhaaaahate you, Rosalie." The whisper hurt. It hurt so much. It burned my throat as the air came out of my lungs, and then scarred my tongue and grated against my teeth it came out of my mouth, and when I heard it, it hurt my ears.

And then the whispered words went from my ears and touched my soul.

That's when I wished Rosalie had kept it, had kept my soul, because now I did prefer nothingness to this agony. This agony I was inflicting on myself.

But I couldn't stop the deluge of words coming out of my mouth like the tears now flowing freely from my eyes again.

"I hate you." I couldn't stop saying it. "I hate you! I hate you!" My whispers became more frantic, and I was screeching now.

"Oh, God, Rosalie, I hate you so mu..."

I felt something pressing lightly on my shoulder, and the coldness of it bleeding through the blanket. The cabin was now dark. Someone had just extinguished all the kerosene lamps.

_Oh, God, no!_ I twisted my head up and around quickly to see in the moonlight the silhouette of Rosalie looking down at me. There was just enough light to see the most beautiful and the most cruel thing in the world: her golden eyes. She whispered something quietly, smiled sadly, and was gone.

_What did she say? What did she say? Oh, God, what did she say!_

I strained every nerve to hear the words my ears couldn't hear at the time of my shock. And then I did recollect them. I did hear them.

She had whispered: _"Stay alive."_

_"WHhhhhhhhyyyyyyy?"_

I did not realize my scream formed a word, had asked a question, until the sound of the silence of the cabin echoed its non-answer.

Because there was no Rosalie to answer it now. She was gone.

Why had she come back to say that? Why had she come back to say that after she had done all this to me?

Yes. Why did she come back, because ...

Because something was _very different_ when she left this time. Something was ... I felt dread creeping over my soul ... something had the feeling of finality to it. What was it? What was different?

What did she say? She had said: "Hunting. 'Bye." and then she had said: "Stay alive." Why would I need to stay alive now? Well, because I was always dying ... but I had stayed alive today. Twice, even. Well, I don't know if the time when she sucked out my soul counted, but ...

Don't think about that. Don't lose focus. What was different? She had said: "Hunting. 'Bye." Had she ever said that before?

No.

Wait: l had heard "'bye" before. When?

And then I did wish Rosalie had killed me, because I did know when I had heard "'bye" before.

I had heard it when Ma left Ekalaka. She had said: "'Bye" with a cheery wave from the coach ...

... and that ten year old girl watching her go never saw her mother again.

Because "'Bye" meant "Good Bye," and "Good Bye" meant "God be with ye."

And that meant "Goodbye forever."

And after Rosalie had said that, she _did_ come back. But what did she come back to? Me, saying I hated her. And so she had said "stay alive" with a sad smile because she knew I couldn't. I couldn't stay alive without her help. But she had heard me, and she probably thought to herself, _"Fine, she hates me; great! She was too much work, anyway. Let's see how long Miss I-hate-you lasts on her own," _and left.

And this time for good.

Because why?

Because I not only said "I hate you" out loud, but she read my mind, too.

I had said it in my heart.

I had said it in my hateful, stupid, ... broken heart. I had just broken my own heart. Just now.

And she had heard that, and understood that, and was _never_ coming back.

Unless ...

"Oh, God, Rosalie!" I whispered, "I'm so sorry! I'm so, so sorry, Rosalie, please!"

_What are you sorry for, you hateful girl?_

"Rosalie, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I said I hated you. I don't. I don't hate you. Rosalie, please, come back. Please."

_Why would she come back? You say you don't hate her, so what? Why would she come back to you? _

_Say it._

No. I couldn't. If I said I loved her, she would _really_ never come back. Why come back to a crazy girl saying "I love you" who for seven seconds couldn't even ...

But she wasn't coming back, anyway. She was never coming back, and this was the only chance I had to say it, when she still might be able to hear my mind.

_Rosalie, I love you._

But I knew saying it my mind wasn't enough. I had said "I hate you" out loud, and Rosalie had heard it, and she was never coming back, because she didn't even stoke the fire, and I could feel the chill seep through the walls onto the blanket, like Death. I had to say it out loud, because I would go to sleep, and I wouldn't wake up again. I had to say it out loud, and I had to say it now.

"Rosalie, oh, Rosalie ... oh, God, I love you. Please come back. Please." I whispered, ... and waited.

Did she come back? The silence of the cabin echoing my fervent whispers was the answer to that question, so I kept whispering her name and kept telling her I loved her. I wanted those words to be my last conscious, living words.

"Oh, God, Rose, I love you. I love you, Rose. I love you."

I didn't care ... no, I did care what name I called her now, because it was like she was two people, well, two things, like that book: the_ Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde._ She was either Her Majesty, Queen Carmilla Rosalie asking me mean questions, stealing my soul and then this _torture_, or she was my Rose taking care of me when I was sick or holding me when I cried or cooking me steak dinners or telling me she loved me.

Not the last one. That was just my delusion, _remember?_ But I needed something — no, I needed _her_ — to hold onto because I knew what waited for me on the other side of the cold and sleep and death creeping into my body and soul.

What waited for me were seven seconds, not of Heaven, but of Hell.

And I couldn't make it ... I couldn't face death with imperious Rosalie, so cold and distant ... so cruel. No, I needed _my Rose,_ holding my hand. I needed her.

I buried my face in her sweater, and breathed in her scent being washed out by my tears, and said the only thing I knew, the only thing that mattered: "Oh, Rose, oh, please, I love you."

The physical and emotional exhaustion had finally overcome me. I tried to keep my eyes open, calling her name, but I couldn't help it. My eyes began to close on their own, and I just couldn't hel...

.......

Seven... Six... Five...

.......

I remember being proud, oh, so proud of myself, because even though I was nearly paralyzed by fear, I got up from the bed, got the cup from the sink, filled it half-way with snow outside and came back in and tipped it into the pot without burning myself.

Look! I could get my own cup of water! My very first own cup of water without Rosalie's help. I sat down at the table, sipping it, feeling a little proud and a little bit braver.

I looked over to the carpet bag full of books, tempted, but I turned away with regret. _I didn't win those._

And then the door opened.

Rosalie peeked her head in, saw me at the table and grimaced. I was confused. I thought she would be pleased that I could take care of myself better, but she simply motioned to me with her head toward the bed.

Okay, well, whatever she wants. I stood up from the table and went to the bed and sat on it. Rosalie scowled at me, disappeared for a second, then came in closing the door behind her. She walked right up to me, displeasure evident on her face, and held out her hand. I blinked in confusion but handed her the cup. She took it to the sink.

Then I realized what she was doing. She was positioning me. She was putting me on the bed for the seven seconds.

It really was going to be seven seconds.

I swallowed in anticipation and fear knotted my stomach. I didn't know exactly — well, I didn't know _at all_ — what she was going to be doing to me, but I hoped I could ask her to be gentle and not forceful or harsh. I hoped she would stop after seven seconds and not just keep going. I hoped she would allow me to ask her to stop when seven seconds were over.

Instead of coming back to me, she went to the door, raised one finger, not even bothering to look at me this time, and disappeared outside. The door opened almost immediately, but Rosalie didn't reappear for a second, but then she did. She was carrying something. Carefully.

It was long — taller than her — so that she had to tilt it on its side to get it through the door. It was also wider than her and a bit thick.

It wasn't a coffin.

It was board-like, but much thicker than a board. I couldn't tell what it was, because it was completely wrapped in butcher paper and tied off with twine.

Butcher paper.

There was enough butcher paper to wrap me up completely. Even if I was torn into pieces.

Rosalie stood it up in the middle of the cabin, between the table and the bed. It almost touched the ceiling. Suddenly the small cabin seemed to shrink around this monolith.

Rosalie reached behind it, and I heard the sound of movement on the butcher paper. She came toward me, pleased about something.

I looked at what she was holding. It was a Moleskine ruled notebook and a box of a dozen ticonderogas.

"For me?" I whispered, still afraid, but hoping, but also afraid to hope. I wanted them, but I didn't want to want them so badly and have her make them a prize for another bet that I couldn't win.

She nodded, but didn't offer them to me. Instead she took them to the table, putting them there by the carpet bag. I noted thankfully that she didn't put them _in_ the carpet bag. I guess they really were for me. But I guess not now ... maybe tomorrow?

Rosalie left the table and then stood by _it._ She motioned me to come to her.

What could _it_ be? She had to tilt it to fit it through the door. It was a little less wide than the door ...

I reached my hand out and touched the butcher paper, feeling something smooth and hard underneath, and that's when I heard it sighing.

"_-_-_"

I don't know how I got there, but I was on top of the bed, pressed as hard as I could against the corner where the walls joined, staring at _it, _seeing Rosalie come toward me, impassive, implacable.

Then I realized what _it_ was. I didn't _look_ like a door; it _was_ a door: a doorway, ... a portal.

I was right: there are no such thing as vampires ... _in this world._ And Rosalie, coming toward me, impassively, imperially, didn't look like a queen. She _was_ a queen: a queen of all the vampires in the world beyond that portal, and she was coming to me to shove me through to the other side, where hundreds of vampires would be waiting. For me.

I was right. She _was_ Carmilla. She was just using the name Rosalie now.

And that's when I knew what she was doing with me. She had used Cullens, or the Cullens served her, just like in the book. I wonder if "Cullens" or "Cuhllenz" was vampire-speak for _entourage_ or _retinue?_ She had used them to collect the next helpless female victim. Not Kristen, because she had a beau; she was popular; she would be missed. No, she had the Cullens pick me: plain, little, out-of-school, nothing me. Somebody nobody would miss, except a small-town nothing sheriff. And she had gotten me out of the way and alone, just like in the book.

_She_ didn't drink human blood. Oh, no, not Rosalie. But those hundreds of other vampires?

.......

Four... Three... Two...

.......

She would shove me through the portal, and they would be waiting: the Cullens, her personal guards. And they would take turns, taking tiny sips.

And then they would lead me out of her private chambers from her beautiful fairy-tale palace to the throne room. And she would be sitting there. And she would present me to her lords in fief to her. See, ever year she had to bring a human over from the other side to keep her rule or else she would have a rebellion.

Last year it was Rosalie, the human Belle of Rochester. This year it was me, just Bella, the Belle of nowhere.

And each lord would get a day with me. That was the rule. And he would take a drink. And then after one lord, I would get a week or two to recover, and then I would be passed to the next and then next, the whole time Queen Rosalie watching over them. Watching over me, making sure they didn't kill me, when they drank my blood, making sure I didn't die.

Because at the end of a year, there would be a grand ceremony, and all the vampires of that world would gather in her courtyard.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what they were gathering for.

And there would be such anticipation in the crowd, maybe even some scuffling, but the Cullens would use there magic powers and make comets fall on all the fighting vampires and only the obedient and loyal vampires would remain.

For the feast.

And then they would tie me to a big stake in the center of the courtyard. And then they would come at me. Slow. Implacable. Unstoppable.

And after all of them had feasted, after I was nearly dead, _she_ would come to me. Queen Rosalie. She would come to me and lift my head with her gentle cold smooth hands and suck out my soul from my body as easy as anything, for she had practiced already, don't you see?

And then the Rosalie body would burn up, because the Queen could only stay in a body for a year, and she would take my soul and hers and enter the shell of my body, and use my soul to make it the new vampire body for the Queen. And it would be cold, hard, and beautiful. But it wouldn't be me any more: it would be _her:_ Her Majesty, Queen Bella. And all the Vampires and Vampire Lords would pay her homage and give their fealty and offer their yearly thanks for the yearly gift.

And then she would come through the doorway again, seven seconds later, because a year in the vampire world was only seven seconds here. She would come through, hunting. Hunting for the next girl. Looking like me, no, _being_ me, because it _was _me, ... before it was Queen Bella of the Vampires.

And the next victim? It would be a curious girl who would come to her, just like Rosalie said she had met Edward before, just like me investigating the mysterious Rosalie, just like that girl who would say to herself, "Wasn't there a girl named 'Bella' who went missing in the midwest last year?" That was how the queen got her victims, just like a spider caught flies: we came to her.

.......

And, as Rosalie picked me up by the shoulders from the bed, just like a girl would pick up a rag doll, easily and gently, I realized the thing in the forest was right about something: there were worse things than dying, and I was about to become one of those things. Well, not 'I,' but my body would: a sacrifice, a new vessel for the Queen.

But I couldn't stop her. I couldn't stop this endless cycle of girls being sacrificed: she was just too strong and too fast ... maybe the more souls you absorbed, the stronger and faster you became. I _was_ a rag doll in her hands, and she was unstoppable. I was already caught in her web — and I thought I was being so clever, figuring everything out — and, like a fly, there was no way for me to escape; she held me in her unbreakable and cold grasp. I truly was nothing compared to her.

She put me down gently in front of _it_. It was if she didn't need to be forceful, she knew her strength, and she knew mine.

She turned to me and said calmly: "Doan't be 'fraidt."

_Don't be afraid, _she had said, and then she put my hand on the butcher paper, nodding. Yes, nodding: _open it._

Yeah, _don't be afraid. _After all, what was there to be afraid of? I'd be vampire food, and a year later there and seven seconds later here my body would Queen of the Vampires. My hand had been dealt, so all that was left for me to lay my cards on the table. _What ya got there, Bella?_ Um, high seven? How about you, Queen Rosalie? _Hm, a royal flush; does that beat your hand?_

Yeah, don't be afraid, she had said, because I was so totally outclasses there wasn't even a point of being afraid. It would be an ant being afraid of me: just no point.

I was trembling now, so I held onto the only thing I could: her. I wrapped my arm around the back of her waist. I realized this was stupid, of course. She would come through the portal _after_ she pushed me or she would come through _with_ me. I'm sure it didn't matter to her.

But it mattered to me. She was all I could hold onto now, so that's what I held, she pulled my hand pressed against _it _down, dragging the butcher paper with it, revealing _it._ She undid the twine and the rest of the butcher paper fell away. I looked to my fate ...

A lark ascending over a sunset of a golden-colored pond was the etched painting in the onyx-stained wood panel. Three wood panels folded together, it appeared, bound on each side by three leather straps, high, middle and low. A triptych.

If I wasn't holding onto Rosalie, I would have fainted and hit the floor. It was just a painted etching, she was just sprucing up the cabin with a decoration! Oh, thank God! _Jeez,_ Bella, you sure have an active imagination!

But ... what was her severe look and "You can do this" and seven seconds all about? What did it have to do with this etching?

As I thought this, Rosalie fanned open the triptych, and I did scream.

It _was_ a portal.

.......

One.

.......

We Germans have our legends, and some of them followed us into the New World, even out as far as the New West. One of legends my grandma would tell me was the doppelgänger: a bald pale creature with empty eyes and dagger-like teeth that would spy you and then change itself to look exactly like you. When that happened, you would die, because it would carry you off and eat you.

Nobody had ever survived an attack by a doppelgänger. The person would disappear, then would show up a few days later (but that was really the doppelgänger) for a few days, but then people would become suspicious, so it would disappear for a few years, and then wait for the next person to double, ... the next victim.

Today it was my turn.

Rosalie opened up the triptych, and it showed an exact duplicate of our world, a doppel-world, but I knew it wasn't our world, because although Rosalie was the same (I guess vampires were the same wherever you went), the creature standing next to Rosalie on the other side of the portal wasn't me. It was if the doppelgänger was caught mid-transformation. Instead of looking like me, it looked like something halfway between its scary monster form and me.

Its eye color was the color of horse manure. That was the color of the irises, the rest of the eye was red-rimmed. The hair was the same color but was tangled and knotted and flat ... flat, that is, where it wasn't frizzied, like it had just been bathed in swamp water. The skin was a pallid white, with a yellow sheen. Its clothes matched my PJs but hung loosely over the body, as if it were leathery skin and bones: just a skeleton, held together by nothing. I raised my hands to cover my face from the horrible sight, and the creature rapidly imitated me, as the doppelgängers do. I buried my scream in Rosalie's shoulder, hoping she'd protect me from that monster.

She didn't. _Why would she?_ She put her hands on my shoulders and turned me toward the portal.

"Yurh boohk." She said.

I lowered my hands to see the monster on the other side lower its own, perfectly in sync with mine.

Then I realized what the monster was.

The monster was me.

I reached out, tentatively toward it, and it reached out, tentatively toward me, but our fingers never touched: the glass of the mirror prevented that from happening.

For facing away from me now was the triptych, but facing me, as I faced _it,_ were three glass panels. Three looking glass panels, stretching from the floor to the ceiling, all pointing at Rosalie, and all pointing at me, the monster.

I swallowed as I looked between the definition of opposites: fantastic beauty and wretched ugliness. Rosalie and me.

Rosalie pointed two fingers to my eyes in the center mirror, and then she brought those fingers to point at her own eyes: _watch me, _the gesture said.

She removed her other hand from my shoulder, straightened her own, standing very erect and proud, and held up her two hands at chest height. Five fingers when up in one hand, two in the other. Then she looked her self dead in the eye, and slowly, ever so slowly, those fingers closed until she held up two fists, her gaze never wavering.

She looked over at me, withdrew a step, and lifted me to where she just was.

_Oh, no. Oh, God, no._

She began to raise her hands again when I spoke quickly, "You know, Rosalie, I'm really tired, so ..." and I turned away, right into her.

She took my shoulders in her hands again, and then held me at arms length, staring at me intensely.

"Pay bet," she demanded coldly.

"I will, Rosalie, I will," I pleaded with a touch of desperation in my tone, "but not tonight ... I'll do it tomorr..."

"Now," she commanded. There wasn't a trace of humanity in her stern features. There wasn't a trace of anything I could talk to.

But I tried: "I ..."

But it didn't work. She turned me back to the mirror and held up both hands. Seven digits appeared.

Okay. She couldn't be bargained with, so I'd just do this. I looked toward the mirror, then looked away quickly, to check my progress. Rosalie's index finger was now down. Okay, one second done so far. That was hard, but I'd just have to do that six more times. She noticed my glance — _she noticed everything! — _and closed all her fingers ... well, all done, that was easy ... until I heard her say something that rocked me to the core.

"Staat ophfer." and then seven fingers lifted away from her clenched fists.

No. Seven whole seconds staring at _that_ without looking away at all? Was she crazy? What did she want? Why was she doing this to me? What was she trying to prove?

"Rosalie, please, ..." I started, but she pointed her right hand with two fingers toward the mirror, impassively, looking toward my reflection in _it_, not at all looking at me. It was if I was nothing, and her little wager was everything. It was if I was nothing.

Okay, fine. She wants seven seconds; I'll give her seven seconds, then I'll go right to bed and go to sleep and forget this nightmare. Seven seconds coming right up.

I looked right at the horror that was me in the mirror, and I counted out seven seconds to myself. Onetwothreefourfivesixseven. There, done! I looked over to Rosalie in triumph.

"There, Miss Meanie, see? I could ..." but the rest of the words froze in my throat.

Rosalie still had four fingers up. She looked at my reflection, closed her hand, and then seven fingers raised their way up.

That's when I realized I couldn't do this. The wager was too high, and I couldn't pay the price.

.......

I tried everything.

I had tried closing my eyes. _Let's see her pry my eyes open! She can't force me to do this! She can't force me to look!_ She didn't need to. She just outwaited me. Eventually I had to open my eyes. _Was she gone?_ I had to check. Nope. She was there, hands up, seven fingers waiting.

...

I tried begging. "Rosalie, please. I'm tired. I can't do this. Please, just let me go to bed. Please, I'll ... I'll try again tomorrow, okay? Please; I just can't do this, not now." But this seemed to make her more distant, more angry, more determined.

...

I tried everything, but I couldn't try what I thought was a sure way to get her to do anything. I couldn't use her Hale pride against her, because she was doing exactly what she felt she had to be doing. She was putting me through this torture because she believed she had to for some unfathomable reason.

So, I tried reasoning with her. I told her the truth. I told her what she knew already. "Look, okay? Look, I know I'm nothing already, okay? We don't have to do this, okay? I'm nothing, okay? Is that what you want to hear? You don't need to prove it to me." Rosalie grimaced at that, so I guessed I hadn't gone far enough. I guess I needed to confess everything, but my confession was peppered with my sobs by now. "Look, I'm ugly," it was really hard to breath, "alright? I'm ugly, and you're beautiful. You're so, so beautiful, okay? And I'm ... I'm ..." I waved at the mirror, not looking at it anymore, but still seeing out of the corner of my eye the wretched monster that I was, "... ugly. Okay? _OKAY?_ Please. _Please-please-please, _just, please, just ..."

Rosalie's face contorted with fury.

"Look, just tell me," sobs were tearing me apart, but I had to do whatever she needed me to do to get away from this Hell, "please just tell me what I need to say ... what I need to do ... just, _please tell me, and I'll do it, okay?"_

Rosalie did look at me. And now I wish she hadn't. Disgust was evident in her face, and she shook her head, pointing two finger toward _it._

I collapsed. I fell to my knees and buried my head into her hip, sobbing. "I can't do this, Rosalie, I can't! I just can't do this." I felt her hands come to my head to comfort me.

I was wrong. Her gentle, smooth, cold, irresistible hands turned my head to the mirror.

"NO!" I screamed at the face contorted in anguish with blood red eyes and tear stained puffy red cheeks. Rosalie held my head in place as I screamed. I began thrashing, trying to get away from the horror Rosalie forced me to look at. I didn't care if I had to tear my head off at the neck, I just had to get away.

I felt myself fall onto the floor, convulsing and screaming. I didn't care. I turned away from _it — from me, the monster —_ and curled up into a ball, whimpering, wracked by sobs.

Rosalie stooped down.

"No, Rosalie, please," I whispered, my voice cracking. She started to turn me toward the ... "NO!" I screamed until I couldn't scream any more.

.......

Zero.

.......

I woke with a start. I was cold, oh, so cold. The fire was out. The cabin was cold.

Rosalie was gone.

I felt that touch my soul.

Rosalie was gone.

I saw, reflected in the mirror from the window, the faintest of blush in the sky: a tint of rose in the early dawn. It was so beautiful. Just like Rosalie: cold, smooth, perfect, beautiful ... cruel.

I grasped her sweater in my hands, cradling it, breathing in her wonderful scent, and despaired. I could wrap it around my head and last a little longer. I could go to the pot on the stove and get some water for my sore throat and cracked lips.

But why bother? 'Why?' I had screamed last night when Rosalie told me to stay alive. What was the point? With her gone, there was nothing ... there was no point. She had tortured me with her cruelty, and I knew that, but I couldn't live with her gone. I didn't want to. I didn't want to go on living. I wanted her. I love her.

But she's gone.

I looked down at the sweater. I would hold it to me. I would hold my Rose to me. I wouldn't just use it as an article of clothing, something to eke out a couple more minutes of life, I would hold it to me as a talisman, as her last gift to me.

Hundreds of years from now, people would come across this cabin and wonder why the girl clasped a sweater to her breast instead of wearing it or instead of wrapping her head to keep herself warm.

A police officer would say: "Stupid girl! Not enough sense in her brain to use clothes to keep warm."

But the detective would look thoughtfully at the scene and point his pipestem to Rosalie's sweater. "That sweater is not the girl's," he would state, smug in his own conceit. "It's too large; it belonged to her mother or older sister who went out gathering berries or wood and never returned because of a fatal mishap."

"This girl didn't die of the cold," this smug detective would summarize, "she died of a broken heart."

And they would all nod knowingly and exit the scene, and one officer would call to another, "So, Bill, you catch the Sea Hawks' game?"

Yes, it didn't matter to them. I would just be a puzzle to solve, but it mattered to me. And they would know that I loved her, more than my own life.

"Rose, I love you." I whispered for the last time, and closed my eyes.


	32. Look Who's Talking

**Chapter summary:** _Mission accomplished._ How do you feel, _vampire_, now that she hates you? Feels pretty good, crushing a sweet, innocent girl's soul like that? She'll probably lead the mob to burn you at the stake, torch in hand. I hope she does. _I deserve it!_

* * *

I awoke.

I was rather annoyed by this fact. Why did it have to be that every time I woke up now, it was a miracle? Back home, I just rolled out of bed, made breakfast for me and Pa, and we rode off to the courthouse. I never gave one thought before about waking up, except for the usual, "ugh!" of another morning.

But now?

Now I woke up slicked in sweat. I had her sweater clasped tightly in my arms to my breast, another sweater wrapped my head, my lips were soft, soft, and tasted of olive oil, my cheeks didn't have the tightness of after a cry that the saltiness of tears caused, in fact it felt and smelt washed with soap and water, and the fire in the stove was burning away brightly and cheerfully ... that meant only one thing.

_How __dare__ she come back after leaving me forever like that!_

I turned to glare at the vampire that was going to get a real talking to, but when I looked I was confused. We must have changed locations, because this cabin was much bigger than the one we were in before, and it had an odd, angled shape and there was another front door, and ...

I realized what was different. We were in the same cabin. What was different was I was looking into the mirrors, seeing the oddly angled reflections.

_The mirrors._

I turned away, facing the wall again and shut my eyes tightly, concentrating on breathing evenly for a moment, trying to collect myself.

That didn't work all that well, so I turned back, being very careful to look toward the stove, toward the sink and toward that end of the table and not toward _it._

My eyes looked for her, and they found her, alright.

Rosalie was back. Not my Rose, but Rosalie. She was sitting at the table regarding me with those cold, heartless, beautiful eyes and not one trace of ... well, she was sitting there with that really mean look to her erect posture. That's how she was sitting.

Oh, God, I hhhhhhhaaa....

_Say it, _I gasped. It was the voice! _... and she'll know._

_Even think it,_ that voice said warningly, _and she'll read your mind, and she'll leave you, but this time, she won't come back._

I swallowed convulsively, as I saw Rosalie's cruel eyes narrow at me, her posture leaning ever so slightly toward the door.

This was the third time I had heard this voice speaking to me. It was my voice, but it wasn't. It wasn't me, because I had heard it talking _to_ me, and it was saying things that I didn't think on my own and that I didn't know.

The first time it had said, _'Shut the Hell up, Bella!'_ when we were coming back from the outhouse, and I was talking about _Pride and Prejudice. _Well, I was really talking about her, but I didn't even know it, but the voice did, and it told me to shut the Hell up, but did I? Oh, no! And what did Rosalie do? She sucked out my soul.

The second time it told me I had to tell her I loved her. Because I did. Because she wouldn't come back after I said those other words, those hateful words ... those hurtful words. Those wrong words. But instead of listening and doing what it said, I argued and argued and worried, and I took forever to say it. And so Rosalie didn't come back that whole night.

Now it was telling me something very important. If I said those bad words again, even in my mind, Rosalie would know. And the voice told me what she would do. And it had not been wrong before.

So I believed it this time, and I changed course very, very quickly.

_I, um, hhhhhaaaa, um, I hawt. Um, yeah. I so hawt. I very, very, um, hot. That's it: I hot. I really hot._

I said I changed course quickly. I didn't say anything about elegantly. But I _was_ hot. Really. And the sudden knifing fear of my almost fatal blunder had sweat trickling out of my armpits and me blushing redder than a fire engine. Rosalie's narrowed eyes saw everything, coldly assessing me, the bug, and then looked away.

But she didn't leave.

God, that was too close!

My eyes rested on her not leaving, but they also took in the two cups in front of her, and that's when I realized something else: not only was I hot — _I so hawt! _I repeated, just to make sure she got the message that was _all_ I was thinking _and_ _nothing else_ — but I was really _thirsty _as well. I shook off the ridiculous sweater wrapping my head, uncovered myself, and got out of bed, being very, very careful the whole time not to look toward _it._

I went toward the table, not straight at it, that is, not right past the mir- ... not right past _it,_ mind you, because, well, because I had to check the front door, ... carefully. And I had to check the far wall for cracks. And I had to ...

WHACK!

I don't know what happened, but I felt this stinging on the side of my face, and I couldn't move. I felt as if I were paralyzed.

Then Rosalie must have picked me up from the floor.

Oh. I tripped and fell down. That's what happened.

Nice.

Rosalie sat me on the bed, looking at me, and removed her sweater from my arms, laying it beside me.

"Huwhy did ju do that?" She regarded me with open curiosity.

I lashed out. "Not everyone can be as graceful ..." My eyes couldn't help but glance over toward the large planes in the middle of the cabin as my thoughts added: _... or as beautiful ... or as cruel ... _"... as you!"

Her eyes flicked over toward the mirrors and then flicked back to me, narrowed.

Her look told me everything. She was wondering why she came back ... and I wasn't helping her answer that question.

I looked down at my lap, but her movement caught my lowered eyes. She rose fluidly from her crouched position in front of me and returned to the table, glancing at her reflection as she passed the mirrors as easy as you please, touching her perfectly flowing hair, and sat at the table, regarding me coolly.

Sure, _she_ could look at herself like that. If I looked like _that, _I'd stare at myself all day long! In fact, I'd have difficultly tearing myself away from the mirror with _those_ kind of looks.

But I wasn't answering her question. I just had to stop being angry, or she would leave anyway, no matter that I didn't think those thoughts that made her leave before.

Maybe a new topic would help. I cleared my throat. "Um, I have some good news ...?" I looked at her expectantly, and she looked back, cautiously.

I smiled. "I'm done with my period. You can talk with me again."

She rose from the chair, regarding me with a look I didn't understand. It looked scared.

Her right hand pointed to me, two fingers extended, then reversed and pointed to her eyes.

"Don-t look away frum me!" She spoke each word slowly, weighing each one with an importance that she wanted me to understand.

"Okay ..." I stood up, but she shook her head in a _no_ vigorously, inverting her hand and making pushing down motions, so I sat back on the bed.

She straightened in her posture, crossing her arms, and looked at me for a second. She then sucked in a breath of air.

Her eyes went pure black, and she gasped out a quiet: _"Oh, God!"_

She stood so rigidly; it looked like she was in agony.

"Rosalie, are you okay? What's wrong?" But I thought she would be okay now. I wasn't bleeding any more.

_"NO!"_ she screeched, _"you need to bathe right now!"_

Well, no kidding! It wasn't as if I hadn't told her that already. I was about to bite off an angry retort when I saw her bump against the table. She was moving ... funny. She was looking toward the door, not at it. She sidestepped a little bit and then promptly bumped into the table again.

"God damn it!" she whispered to herself.

She couldn't see at all. _She was blind!_ I stood up and started toward her. "Rosalie, let me help you," I offered, and my heart, finally, went out to her. She looked so lost.

Lost, ... and furious. _"You stay right there!" _she shouted, her head whipping around to face me, staring right into my eyes.

That is, if my eyes were on my right shoulder.

"What are you going to do, _mortal,_ to help me, _a __vampire__?"_ She spat out the last word angrily. "The only way you can help me right now," she continued just as forcefully, "is if you_ stay on that bed and don't move from it. Do you understand me?"_

I sat back down on the bed. "Yes," I whispered quietly, looking at her looking so lost and angry.

She was muttering to herself. "I can find my way perfectly fine, thank you!" Sarcasm dripped from her voice. "As if I needed a little miss ..." but then she suddenly changed the direction of her tirade: "I'm a Hale, I don't need anybody or anything!" She sounded like she was really trying very hard to convince herself of something.

"I'm a nomadic vampire. I'm all alone. I don't need anybody to help me! I don't need anybody." She whispered fervently.

She was breathing now. She was talking now. But this was not the happy release from the silence I was looking for. It didn't look like she was all that happy, either.

"I don't need anybody to ..." she broke off quickly. I heard a click coming from her partially opened mouth. She stood straight up, walked around the table with confidence, her black blind eyes looking straight ahead at nothing. She went to the door and put her hand on the latch.

Well, she put her hand on the latch if it were two inches higher than it was.

She uttered an oath that I winced to hear, never thinking she would say something like that, having only thought that word once in my life, and never having said it out loud. She moved her hand along the lining of the door until she found the latch and opened it, stepping out.

She turned back and looked at me with black, black eyes.

"Don't move an inch from that spot. _Do you understand me?"_

I nodded my head in a _yes,_ helplessly.

_"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!"_ she screamed at me.

"Yes!" I shouted back, shocked ... she still couldn't see me. She still couldn't see anything. "I understand, okay? I won't move; I promise."

"Don't promise me anything, L-..." she swallowed, breaking off again, but then continued, unabated, but correcting herself quickly, "... girl, just don't move!"

Without another word she closed the door firmly. She was gone.

Yeah. Her musical voice screaming at me. That's exactly what I had wanted, wasn't it? Boy, did I ever get it.


	33. My New TODO List

**Chapter summary:** "Oh, _vampire _me; lonely_ vampire _me; leave me alone, L-..." Why does _she_ get to call herself vampire? Wait a minute ... "lonely"? And did she just call me "L-something"? "L-something" what?

* * *

What just happened? I tried to recover from the shell-shock of the whirlwind that just occurred. I reviewed in my mind, as I sat, not moving an inch, on the bed, our little exchange.

Once she started breathing again, she just went blind. _Why?_ I couldn't fathom a reason for that one. I wasn't bleeding anymore, but it seemed like things were worse than when I was bleeding, not better.

Hm. Why? Nothing came to me, so I guess I'll just have to let this one pass for now and maybe ask her about this when she came back.

It also seemed important that I stay away from her. Why? She was always carrying me to the outhouse and back. Why the 'stay away from me' distance now?

No answers for that one either. Strike two. Reflecting on what occurred, I was coming up with more questions than answers.

I pressed forward, hoping I'd get at least one answer somewhere in my thoughts. Well, next she had called herself vampire. She had called herself vampire twice just now.

Fine! _She _gets to call herself vampire, but when _I_ do that, she bites my head off. Well, not bites my head off, but makes me go swimming in the snow, for crying out loud! Why the sudden reversal from 'I'm not a vampire' to 'vampire me, nomadic vampire, I'm all alone'? It was as if she were emphasizing the different between us, reminding me that she was a vampire and I was a human. It was if she were distancing herself from me.

Wait a minute. 'I'm all alone'?

When she had said that, she had corrected herself. She was going to call me something, but then she corrected herself and called me 'girl,' instead. And she didn't call me 'girl' with that disparaging tone; she called me 'girl' quickly, as if she were desperate to cover over a mistake. A mistake of what she _was _going to call me.

What exactly did she say? She said something about not making promises. She had said: "Don't promise me anything, L-..." something. L-something.

L-something? Like a term of endearment? Like what Mrs. Hungerford, who always volunteered at the cafeteria, called me? Like: "Love"?

...

I remember like it was yesterday now, the memory coming to me so clearly. I was in line at the cafeteria, and it was meatloaf for lunch today. Of course that meant it was Monday. Meatloaf on Mondays. Spaghetti on Wednesdays — the parents learned quickly to dress their children in dark clothes on Wednesdays: white shirts never survived the sauce flying off the noodles as you slurped them up. Friday was either fish sticks or fish squares. Tuesdays and Thursdays were crazy days, because you never knew what was for lunch those days. Some of those days I asked if I could pack a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple, just to be safe.

Well, today was Monday. Meatloaf. I was in line, and Mrs. Hungerford put a slice of meatloaf on my tray, then she scooped out the mashed potatoes from the big chafing dish and plopped that scoop on my tray.

"Could I have a little bit of butter on that, please?" I asked her bravely. Well, I thought it was brave, but it came out rather timidly for a seven year old girl.

She looked at me with a long-suffering look with tired, watery eyes. Her look said she'd have to do that for every kid in line now. A look that said she'd been standing on her aching feet, and why was I asking her for extra butter when all she wanted to do is to go home for a nice nap.

"I'm sorry," I said, looking down and blushing at my selfishness.

She sighed, however, and put another whole scoop of mashed potatoes on my tray, swimming in butter. After she doled out the string beans, she handed me the tray, then fished out a nickel from her apron and gave it to me.

"Um, what's that for, ma'am?" I asked, not looking at the tall, old, old woman. She was probable forty-two or something really old like that.

"In case they charge you extra, Love," she responded, her voice surprisingly high. I had never heard it before.

I paid for the lunch, the cashier eyeing my tray. Do I need to mention that I blushed? But I didn't get charged extra. So I left my tray there and raced back to Mrs. Hungerford, holding out the nickel.

"I didn't get charged extra," I explained breathlessly, but she wouldn't take back the nickel, no matter how hard I tried to return it. She pointed her finger at me and looked all scary and exclaimed, "Now you listen here, Love," and told me to keep the nickel and told me to buy treats at Swanson's general store with it and told me she would check with Mrs. Swanson to see if I did and told me a wee skin and bones like me needed something to eat other than lunch and asked if my parents fed me at all or what?

I was running back to my tray by then, however, scared out of my mind, so I didn't hear the rest of her lecture. The cashier had to remind me that I had already paid for lunch. This reminder was a good thing because I was about to have a panic attack, holding a solitary nickel in my hand and a full lunch tray without the dime to pay for it.

After school, I was the most popular person at the store, because I bought a nickel's worth of treats and shared with everybody. Twice.

The next evening Pa cornered me while I was doing my homework.

"Bella, why were there so many kids at Swanson's asking for you today?"

"Um," was my witty reply, but Pa eventually dragged the whole story out of me.

"Well," he said, thoughtfully, "that's nice of her."

Ma then had asked what brought Mrs. Hungerford out here. She obviously didn't fit in, with a last name like _Hungerford. _And she wasn't even Catholic, for goodness sake!

I don't remember how Ma had said that. I don't remember what her voice sounded like anymore ... I wonder if that'll happen to me with Pa's voice. _No, _I thought, practically, _I won't last that long, anyway._

"Her daughters moved out here with their husbands," Pa responded, "so she wanted to be with her grandchildren."

Ma couldn't believe that somebody would move all the way from Mobile, Alabama to cold-cold Ekalaka, Montana to spend time with family. She mentioned something about photographs being good enough. Pa responded it was probably about priorities, but this didn't seem to convince Ma.

...

Did Rosalie feel lonely? She had probably never been alone in her life. She was probably always pampered; a rich girl, always fawned over. She probably never had to stand on her own two feet, never had to take care of the whole family like I did.

Did I need to take care of her? Obviously not. But, did she want me to take care of her? Was she kind of like Pa that way? I mean, not at all like Pa, but like him because he _could _take care of himself. I mean he fought in the War, for goodness sake; he survive gas attacks and firefights. He could take care of himself, but he was happy for me to take care of him. That pleased him, and it pleased me to do it: taking care of Pa as he took care of the county.

Did Rosalie need that?

Of course, I couldn't ask her outright. I didn't have to guess to figure what her response would be. I didn't know what it would be exactly, but I bet ... um, no, let me rephrase that: _I'm pretty sure_ it would involve a lot of shouting.

Me: "Oh, um, Rosalie, do you want me to take care of you?"

Rosalie: _shout-shout-shout_, followed by a pause to gather a lungful of air, followed by some more _shout-shout-shout_ing.

Maybe she was shouting so much because she felt she had to do everything. _And _there was the whole thing about her wanting my blood more than drinking what she drank instead. Hm. Maybe if I said it would be okay for her to take a sip or two that would make it easier for her. Maybe knowing that it was okay for her to take an occasional sip would help her to worry less about it.

You know, she could, um, _do it _when I was sleeping, or something, so she didn't have to do all that work of sucking out my soul first.

Well, one thing at a time. First I'd help with some chores, and eventually take over the household work and then I could offer her the other thing after she got a little bit more comfortable with my help and she relaxed. Well, relaxed a bit. I added that to my To-do list, after (1) make Rosalie smile, then came my two new items (2) help with the chores and stuff, and (3) offer some of my blood, as like, you know, a dessert, I guess, after her main, um, meal.

Excellent!

Now, as for calling me "Love." Hm.

Hum. Hum. Hum.

As for calling me "love" ... well, _obviously, _she didn't love me, it was just like Mrs. Hungerford. Rosalie was just as scary ... well, okay, Rosalie was _much more_ scary, but Mrs. Hungerford was just calling me "love." She didn't _really love me,_ and she wasn't _in love with me; _she was just saying that. I bet she called all the kids she talked to "love." Not that I ever saw her talk to anybody else, ever, but if she _did,_ then she'd probably call them "love," too.

I wonder how I could tell Rosalie that it'd be okay to call me "love" ... if she wanted to, that is. How I could tell her I didn't mind and that I understood that it didn't mean anything ... if she didn't want it to mean anything.

I imagined her calling me "love": "Love," she would say, "drink your water now."

Yeah, it was okay if she wanted to call me "love." That was fine by me. I mean, I know it doesn't mean anything ...

I'm repeating myself, aren't I?

Dammit, I'd probably flub telling her, and she'd be staring at me blushing the whole time I'd be trying to convey a totally innocent explanation. _Honest!_ But then the shouting would start, wouldn't it?

I grimaced. Maybe I'd help with a few chores and try not to react to her calling me "love." Yes, that's probably the safest course for now. Help with the chores first.

* * *

**A/N:** It may be forgivable for the good people of Ekalaka, MT, being generally of Germanic stock, not to know how to eat spaghetti properly, but it's really very simple. With a fork in one hand and the spoon in the other one twirls some of the pasta into a ball around the fork using the spoon as the base, then one simply plops that into one's mouth. See? No mess, no fuss.

Now, one never-never-never cuts spaghetti with a knife or with the fork or spoon. _Why not, geophf?_ Well, obviously, firstly, because that's just wrong. Secondly, go to Italy and do that. The chef will come out of the kitchen to give you what-for, personally. _But I'll never go to Italy, so I can cut the noodles, right?_ Wrong, because they aren't "noodles," mkay? And if you're at my house, you'll get what-for. And, most importantly, you always have to be prepared for that inevitable Volturi summons, don't you.


	34. First Bath

**Chapter summary:** This is much worse than I thought it would be. Much worse. How do I keep cold and distant? I must. But how do I do that when she doesn't even have the confidence to look in a mirror? She cannot believe what she said about herself ... can she?

* * *

The door banged open, and I jumped a bit. Was I just thinking about chores? Because Rosalie walked in carrying a large galvanized oval metal tub. It was just big enough for me to stand in easily, or sit in if I scrunched my knees up to my chest.

I guess the first chore would be a bath, then. She set the tub by the stove, and I saw that there were two wooden pitchers in the tub. The pitchers looked to be about a half-gallon in size each.

Rosalie looked over to me, looked back to the tub by the stove and grimaced. She moved it to sit by the foot of the bed, but she seemed not to like that either, moving the tub to the center of the cabin, away from everything.

Away from everything, but right next to _it._

I rather didn't like that all that much, myself.

She went to _it, _and I looked away. I heard movement of furniture, then pouring of water, which I surmised was going into the tub. The door opened and closed, and then I heard Rosalie's beautiful, musical voice by the tub.

"I really have to wonder what's right outside the window that's so _fascinating _for you to be so transfixed."

"I..." I started, looking over to Rosalie with her black eyes, but I stopped when I saw me right next to her, sitting on the bed.

Rosalie was standing right next to the right-most mirror.

_Gah!_ I got an eyeful of exactly what I was trying to avoid. I looked hard at Rosalie only, avoid looking at the rearranged centerpiece that now angled around the tub, facing more toward the stove, but with the right-most mirror pointing straight at the bed.

Rosalie was looking right at me, but abstractly, distantly. She had a large towel draped over her arm. When I didn't continue, a puzzled expression crossed her face, but then she pushed into my silence.

"Your bath is ready. Check to make sure the water in the bottom of the tub isn't too hot." She began pointing: "Water," at the pitchers, "which should be the right temperature, but check first, please," then she pointed again: "and soap. You'll wash your hair after you bathe, okay?"

"Rosalie, why are your eyes black? I don't have my ..." I needed to know, but I stopped again, because Rosalie came at me, calmly, but very, very controlled.

"Girl, why are you asking questions?" She was looking right through me. She still couldn't see. "Bathe. Now."

She extended her arm holding the towel carefully, almost bumping my nose. I murmured a 'thank you' and took the towel from her, but I didn't get up from the bed.

That elicited an impatient: "Well?" from Rosalie, who did one of her elegant not-pointing but waving-toward the tub to help the obviously addle-minded girl find her direction.

"Um, Rosalie, please, I'm sorry, but ... could you, like, I don't know, put _that_ away or cover it or something?" I asked her quickly, not looking toward the object in question, not looking toward her.

Rosalie muttered an _'I don't believe this!'_ but then spoke more forcefully, "Look, girl, the mirrors are facing away from the tub, see? You are going to be able to bathe in privacy, and you'll have a lovely painted image to admire as you bathe. Very relaxing." She spoke as if to a child. "You have nothing to fear, ... except for the small fact that there's a vampire in the cabin." She grimaced as she said that last part but then continued: "I'm giving you some privacy. I'm not going to turn the mirrors on you as you bathe, you kn..." She stopped suddenly.

And so did my heart. My mouth went cotton dry. I couldn't have imagined something as terrible as she said, but when she said it, I couldn't get it out of my mind. Me, bathing, and suddenly, her, turning the mirrors onto me, a girl standing in the tub totally exposed and with nowhere to run or to hide.

And she read it all. I couldn't hide my thoughts from her.

"I cannot believe this!" She was furious. "You know I wouldn't do that to you, don't you?" she was nearly shouting at me.

I couldn't answer. I couldn't speak, ... and I didn't know. She said she wouldn't, but what if she got it in her head that she needed to do that to me for some reason?

Like last night.

My heart was beating a mile a minute.

Rosalie gritted her teeth and forced out an _"I do not believe this!" _but not so quietly this time. She crossed her arms and stared toward me with unmasked disdain.

I dropped my eyes but eventually looked up again. She just stood there. Was she waiting for me to give in and go to the tub?

No, that wasn't it. Her eyes were brightening. She wasn't breathing. She now looked directly at me. She now could see me; see everything. She gave me a once-over, shook her head and marched over to the piles of clothes in the corner of the cabin by the table. She pulled out a bed sheet and quickly tied off the corners of it to the corners of _it, _hiding the mirrors.

She looked right at me, and her eyes shifted from golden to black in an instant.

"There, see? Now, would you _please ... _?" she asked as she waved toward the tub.

She was still Rosalie: she was hard and cruel and angry. She was Rosalie, but she was being polite, too, and _accommodating,_ even though, for some reason, it went against her grain.

"Yes, thank you," I whispered in awe.

She was looking toward me, but she didn't see me, so I felt safe to disrobe quickly. _Chores, _I reminded myself, so I wrapped myself in the towel and folded my PJs on the bed.

"Tick-tock!" Rosalie said impatiently. "Any time now! The morning is gone, and the day fast on its heels. There's so much to do that there isn't time to waste."

"... Coming!" I gasped as I finished tweaking the fold of the shoulder of my PJ top into a perfect corner. I flitted quickly past her, seeing her not seeing me as she turned, following the sound of my movement.

I stood by the tub and carefully raised my leg over its edge, fighting to maintain my balance, and put my big toe in the inch of water in the bottom of the tub.

_Ah! Perfect!_ I flattened my foot down in the nice, warm water, and it came to rest on the nice, warm galvanized tub bottom. I took off the towel and put my other foot in.

I squatted in the tub and picked up a pitcher of water, feeling the hot water with a finger ... the perfectly hot water in the pitcher. I poured it over my shoulder and felt it traveling down my back.

_Oh, God! So wonderful!_

I picked up the soap and the wash cloth it rested on by the side of the tub and started lathering my back.

"Have everything you need?" Rosalie asked in my direction, causing me to jump a little bit in the tub. In my bliss, I had forgotten she was there. I had forgotten the world was there.

"Um, yes, thank you," I responded, not looking toward her. I couldn't see her, so she couldn't see me, I reasoned.

"Good," came the crisp reply, "now, if you'll excuse me, I have things to do here."

That response did make me look over my shoulder, but she was no longer by the triptych. I did, however, hear movement from beyond it.

I looked at the triptych — so peaceful, so beautiful — she was right: looking at it was very relaxing. I picked up the pitcher and poured hot water over my front side and lathered myself there. Each time I rubbed soap in and rubbed myself with the washcloth I felt a layer of dirt fall off me like an old layer of skin being shed from a rattler. I felt I was being reborn.

Then I heard it: the sound of ripping by the stove.

Ripping? _Oh, no!_ I thought of the sweater I had held through the night being shredded and thrown into the fire.

"Rosalie, stop!" I shouted as I ran around the side of the triptych to stop her.

Or would have run around its side ... see, there's this tub I was in that I didn't quite lift my legs over.

I tripped over the edge of the tub and then fell. My face hit the floor again, and my shin hit the side of the tub. Hard.

"Ow!" I shouted. _Damn it, damn it, damn it!_ That really hurt.

What really hurt, the face slam or the shin bang? My answer: yes. Well, okay, I think my shin hurt much, much worse. I started to pick myself up when I was interrupted by a fierce command:

"Don't move!" Rosalie shouted at me, so I froze, very aware that my back side was topside.

I looked up to Rosalie towering over me, who was, thankfully, looking away, toward the front door.

"Are youh bleedin-k?" Rosalie asked tightly. I could recognized the not-breathing-in voice.

"Um, ..." I started, but I guess I wasn't fast enough for Queen Rosalie.

"Tell mhe _RAIGHT NOWH!"_ she shouted, still looking toward the front door.

"I'm looking, okay?" I shouted right back. _Jeez! _Was it going to kill her to wait half-a-second?

I twisted my head around and lifted up my leg a little bit. There'd be a bruise there, but the skin wasn't broken.

"Um, no, I'm not bleeding, okay?" I wanted to mention something about standing down from red alert, but Her Majesty didn't look like she was at all pleased.

She turned to me with a very displeased look on her face and immediately picked me up — _hey! _— and deposited my soapy self into the chair closest to the tub. Thankfully the mirrors were covered, but they weren't pointed at me anyway, they were facing the stove.

She grabbed my chin and turned my face to the side, not so gently, I'd like to mention right here, and examined my face critically. She then crouched right in front of me to examine my legs.

Yes, I am aware what was at her eye level, okay? My belly button, thank you very much for wondering. Do me a favor, okay? Next time, don't wonder.

She looked down — okay, she looked way down to my shins, okay? _Jeez!_ — and examined them critically with her eyes and very soft strokes of her fingers. My shins. She examined my shins, okay?

"No bleeding," she announced, looking at me with black eyes.

I think I told her that already.

"... but your going to have a bruise there," she continued after her concluded her exam, looking back at me.

_Really? I was going to have a bruise there. Oh, my!_ Her grasp of the obvious was astounding.

But she was looking at me with considering eyes, she kept shifting her gaze between my shin that was throbbing and my face with her more-than-considering eyes.

I blushed. What _exactly_ was she considering?

It didn't help any that I was clothed in less and less soap bubbles as she considered. And the water evaporating off my skin, um, cooling it, ... well, it was hard not to react to that _and _her stares, okay?

Looking away helped a little, I guess, but that didn't last all that long either.

"So what was so important that you had to risk your life for it, princess?" Rosalie asked with a tinge of amusement to her exasperated question.

I wasn't amused: "Princess!" If anyone in this cabin were a princess it would be Her Highness squatting before me.

"Yes: 'princess,'" she retorted. "See?" she explained, "you've been captured by the _wicked vampire," _she smirked here and then continued:_ "_and have been brought to her fairy-tale castle." She waved expansively at the cabin.

My heart stopped again, and my breath caught in my throat ... again. The blood drained from my face. _Fairy-tale castle?_ I stared at her intently, trying to see if I could somehow _see_ Carmilla beneath the Rosalie exterior. But as I was staring at her intently, her eyes whipped to mine, and she was staring right back, and just as hard. She was staring right into my eyes, but I realized she could look anywhere she pleased: I had nothing to hide, and nowhere to hide it.

I guess today was the day for me blushing. I hope there wasn't a maximum quota, because I might have exceeded it already. I crossed my arms over my chest. That helped, but not everywhere.

She looked away quickly. Wow, I had just won a staring contest with a vampire! Do they hand out trophies for that? Then she said something I didn't expect to hear.

"Look, could you please do me a favor? Try not to look so temptingly delicious at every single thing I say."

_Oh, God._ My blush was really hitting her hard. I blushed harder and looked away, muttering something about how I'd work on that. I really wished I could cross my legs, but Rosalie was right there, and I didn't think I could be subtle about doing that if I were kicking her in the face.

But she did get up and went over to the piles of clothes, picking up two towels, so as she was doing that, I crossed my legs. I didn't know if I had permission to leave the chair yet to get my own towel, and I wasn't looking forward to being shouted at again.

She went over to the tub and looked at it, examining it closely and then looked at the towels. She sighed and muttered something about _too much scent, _looking over to me and tossing me one of the towels. I unfolded it and covered my front side.

Then Rosalie stooped down over the tub, and started twisting her hands over the edge of it. It almost looked like she was peeling an orange. The metal complained faintly, helplessly, in protest to what was being done to it.

When she had circled the tub, the edge of it, its lip, instead of being straight up was curved away and down, just as the lips of the porcelain bath tubs were made. She circled it once more, touching here and there, perfecting her already perfected work.

"Good," she noted, business-like, and came back to crouch in front of me, a bit below eye level. "Now what was the crisis that started all this?"

But I ignored that question: "You can see now!" I exclaimed.

Rosalie raised one eyebrow. The last three days actually did me some good, for now I could read her expressions better. This one was saying, _'brilliant observation, genius!'_

Okay, maybe the last three days hadn't done me all that much good, but ...

"But why couldn't you see before?" and what had changed? Was a taking a bath all that helpful for her? How often would I need to bathe, then?

Rosalie entirely ignored my question: "Crisis?"

The last three days hadn't improved her patience much.

"Um, oh!" I recalled what all the falling was about. I looked quickly over at the pile by the stove. I saw the sheets from the bed, the top one torn into ragged pieces. I didn't see the red sweater, but there things under the sheets, maybe ...

"Um," I started, but Rosalie grimaced and looked like she was about to say something, so I waited. She didn't say anything however, just raised her eyebrows, waiting for me. "Um, the red sweater you wore last night ... is it in that pile?"

Rosalie didn't look over toward the stove, but she did stand up.

"Yes," she responded guardedly.

"I'd like to keep that, please. Please don't burn it, okay?" I asked. I tried to ask like it was my sweater, because she gave it to me, sort of, and not asked like begging. It mostly worked.

"I can't bel-..." Rosalie broke off, crossing her arms.

"I'm going to be saying that all the time, aren't I?" She looked at me and shook her head.

I looked down and whispered: "I don't see what the problem is ..."

"The _problem is_ this, my dear, the problem is that particular piece of clothing you ask for has the worst embedding of your scent on it. _The worst!" _ Rosalie looked very cross.

But I wasn't focused on her anger. I was focused on the words. Two words: _my dear._ That didn't mean anything, did it?

I recollected myself. "I could wash it ... I could wash all those; you don't need to burn them. I could take care of that."

This, however, set Rosalie off.

"It that what you think I brought you out here for? To be my washer woman? Is that what you see yourself as? The Hale's little maid? Is that the sum total of your ambition?" She just kept getting angrier and angrier.

"We did have a little scullery maid that did the laundry as well ... brown hair and brown eyes, and about your age, too. She wasn't even a servant: she was a servant _to the servants_, cleaning up after them. Is that what you want out of your life? Was that what she wanted? Did she decide when she was born or when she was a little four year old girl, _'Oh! I want to be the Hale's laundry girl!'?"_

Now Rosalie rounded on me.

"No, it wasn't, but somewhere along the way, she decided, or her parents decided for her ... _and she went along with it_ ... that being a scullery maid was her life's purpose. And do you know what her reward was for choosing that path?"

Rosalie glared at me, furiously. I was struck mute by this outburst.

_"Do you?"_ she demanded, so I shook my head _no. _I guess it wasn't a rhetorical question.

Rosalie hissed her answer to me: "She ended up out on the street, destitute. Imagine that, a little girl, just like you, cowed by the other servants and cowed by me, for no reason at all other than that she saw herself as the scullery maid, and her reward was poverty and maybe even death out on the streets. Why didn't she come out here instead of choosing that life? Why didn't she just go somewhere else and seize hold of her life and make her own choices? Why? Because _she thought she had to do the dishes and then the laundry, that's why!_ Is that what you think, girl? Is that how you value yourself? Is that the measure of your worth?"

She was right in my face, spitting out these words in hate. And I was pressed against the seat back, mesmerized by her onyx eyes and that intoxicating honeysuckle and rose scent that seemed to be so much stronger in her anger.

"I just ..." I whispered into that angry face.

"You _just what!"_ Rosalie didn't back down an inch.

I swallowed hard, but I couldn't stop the tears from leaking out, so I looked away from her and tried again.

"I just wanted to help. That's all. You're doing everything, and I just ... I just wanted to help."

The whole 'helping with the chores' plan just flew like a lead balloon, didn't it?

I felt her recede from me, so I looked up at her pleadingly.

And saw conflict warring on her face again. She reached out toward my face, then hesitated. She grimaced, then turned away from me, toward the stove.

My heart broke. She was reaching out to me, but she stopped herself.

She strode purposefully to the pile by the stove and then retrieved the sweater, came to me and handed it over.

I cradled it to me. It covered me, it was that big, and I held it to me. Rosalie grimaced again, but spoke quietly.

"That'll need to be washed, washer girl," she looked away.

"Okay," I replied rising from my chair, going around her, favoring my bruised shin, heading toward the tub.

"What are you doing?" Her voice went from soft to surprised.

"I'm going to wash it ..." I explained.

"In _that?"_ Rosalie looked toward the tub in shock.

"Yes, just to rinse it first, ... then I'll use ..." I started to tell her what I was going to do, but angry Rosalie was back now.

"Putting _more_ of your scent on the sweater is _not_ rinsing it." She held her hand out imperiously. "Give that back to me."

I looked at her, then looked down at the sweater.

"No," I whispered.

"I beg your pardon?" Rosalie's voice was very calm. Very deadly.

I wondered if she'd ever been told _no_ before.

"You can't take it back. You gave it to me; it's mine now." I held the sweater tightly to me, head bowed over it, looking down into it. Not looking at her, but not backing down. This was my sweater now.

"You are wrong," Rosalie stated quietly. I was surprised at how calm she was while she spoke. She was so controlled. "You may forget, but I do not: I am a vampire. I can take, and I do take. That's _all_ I do. But I'm only taking the sweater to wash it in _clean_ water, now ..." She paused here for a brief second, then said: "would you _please_ give me that sweater, and I will return it to you when it's clean?"

I was still looking down at the sweater, holding it to me, reluctant to let it go.

"Do you promise to give it back?" I asked, hoping to have some hold over it, some guarantee of its return.

Rosalie crossed her arms and didn't answer. I looked up at her finally. She was staring at me, intently.

"Girl, listen to me." She demanded so softly that I had to strain to hear her words. "A vampire gets to make one, and only one, promise in its entire existence. I gave you it last night. So all I can do now is to ask for you to please give me the sweater now, and I will return it after it's clean. That's all I can do now."

I looked at her. Her words striking me with their seriousness. She had given me her only promise. I had guessed last night that it was forever, and she had just now confirmed it. She could never promise anything, ever again, because she gave her only promise to me.

I swallowed, grasping finally the significance of last night's gesture, and two more tears leaked out of my eyes. I handed her the sweater, and she held it gingerly, moving toward the door.

"Now, please wash your hair. The bottle of shampoo is next to the Listerine. I will return shortly." She opened the door and stepped out, but then turned back: "Oh. Please do not use that towel. Leave it by the stove."

"No more requests for promises, okay?" And she was gone.


	35. With the Depression On

**Chapter Summary:** I seem to remember some girl wishing Rosalie could speak again so we could have a conversation. If you see that girl, could you send her my way? I have a few words for her.

* * *

I looked at the door Rosalie had just closed. She had asked that I not ask for any more promises as she left, because she had no more to give. She had given me her only promise.

I had asked for it, and she gave it to me, but I didn't know it was so serious when I asked. I didn't know it was her only one.

I just couldn't wrap my head around what was happening. Here she was, shouting at me, being so mean, but, at the same time, she was giving me all that she could give me.

Her only promise, and she gave it to me. I had asked, and she had given it to me.

She even gave me the sweater. She gave me her sweater, even though it was painful for her even to be near it.

She couldn't love me. _She couldn't._ She was just so mean and so angry at me. Ma and Pa never fought like that. Ma and Pa never shouted at each other like that. Ma and Pa loved each other. I mean, they loved each other while they were together. It was just the hardships of the New West that drove Ma away, ... not Pa. I never heard them say a bad word about each other. Even after she left, Pa never said one bad thing about Ma. Even after she remarried.

Not once.

But Rosalie was always shouting at me. Rosalie was always doing mean things to me. Always! I looked over at the triptych and remembered the torture she put me through last night. And for what? To show that she was beautiful and that I was ugly.

You can't get any meaner than that. _Nobody_ had _ever_ been that mean to me ... until Rosalie.

Heck! She kidnapped me away from Pa and put me in this dangerous situation where I was always dying. _That's mean, too!_

She _couldn't_ love me. Nobody that mean could love somebody, especially not Miss Meanie, Rosalie _Lillian_ Hale, who was always so mean and angry at me.

But then she gave me her only promise forever.

And she was washing the sweater to give to me.

I wonder if I could ask her to wear it before she gave it back to me, so her scent could be on it when I got it back.

I wonder if I could ask her to wear it occasionally ... you know, like, at least every time it needed to be washed?

I sighed. This was getting me nowhere, and Rosalie was expecting my hair to be washed. I had better rinse off the soap sticking to my body and get on that before Rosalie came back. No reason to give her more excuses to shout at me.

I looked across the table and saw the two cups. They were filled with liquid, and I was very, very _thirsty._

They were by her ... was she drinking from them? Were they filled with blood?

I approached the cups cautiously. Picked one up, cautiously. And sniffed. Cautiously.

It didn't smell like blood. It didn't smell like anything. Maybe it was water?

I dipped a finger in ... no color. I tasted what was on my finger ... no taste, so I risked taking a sip.

It was water, ... not blood. And not her voice.

Of course it wasn't her voice: she was talking now. _Duh, silly!_ Boy, I'm _really_ smart, aren't I? No wonder why Rosalie was always shouting at me. It was like she had to explain everything to a baby.

But Pa didn't shout at me ... even when I was learning to cook, and I burned the loaf of bread in the stove because I forgot about it.

I finished off one cup, then finished off the other. Both were water. Neither were her voice.

But my throat was a little bit raw from all the screaming I did last night ...

I went to the boxes under the sink, and sat on the floor beside them. I lifted out the shampoo beside the Listerine, right where Rosalie said it would be, then I looked at that brown, squat opaque bottle containing Rosalie's voice.

I pulled it out and unscrewed the top.

The sweet smell of honey wafted out as I waved it under my nose.

Perhaps one sip would do me good. She wouldn't mind if I took one sip, would she? I mean, what was the worst that could happen?

The I quickly spun the cap back on the bottle and replaced it in the box in the exact place it was before, because I knew exactly what would happen. I'd take one sip, stagger all over the cabin, bleeding because I cut myself somewhere, and then I would give the stove a big old bear hug.

But that wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing would be Rosalie would walk in right then, see me burning on the stove, and kill me. And then she would start shouting at me. And then she would kill me again. And start shouting at me again, and I wouldn't hear the end of that for weeks, or until she killed me for real ... whichever came first.

I looked at the bottle sitting in the box and then looked away. Yeah, probably best to let Rosalie decide when I needed her 'medicine.'

_'Medicine.'_ Yeah. Right.

I wonder when she'd tell me that was really her voice. I wonder when she'd tell me _anything_. She was always thinking, but she was never telling me anything. And then, like this morning, the dam broke loose and all I could do was weather the storm of her angry words ... that didn't tell me anything other than I was stupid and that she was angry at me for being stupid.

_Yeah,_ I shook my head regretfully, _definitely didn't love me._

I picked up the bottle of shampoo and took it over to the tub with me. I removed the towel, and folded it neatly into a square, laying it beside the tub.

I _still_ had soap on me from my dash to rescue _my_ sweater. _Ick. _I stepped back into the tub.

Hm. There was just one pitcher of water left, but I still really needed to soap down more everywhere, but especially the private areas. I took the empty pitcher, dipped it into the tub and wet myself down with that gray soapy water and took the bar of soap and reapplied it everywhere thoroughly this time, really cleaning those stinky armpits and stinky ... well, I was clean now, okay? Besides, the other parts weren't so stinky because Rosalie always cleaned me after I ...

Why am I telling you any of this?

Anyway, I rinsed off the soap from my body with the pitcher of clean water. I stepped out of the tub, using the last bit of clean water in the pitcher to rinse off my feet. _Ah! Clean!_

But what to do for the shampoo? I looked at the empty pitchers. Ah, well, I could rinse my hair with the water in the tub. It wasn't too dirty, really. Just mostly soap. I filled both pitchers with water in the tub, knelt down on my towel, and poured a pitcher of water over my hair.

This did nothing. My hair was that oily and dirty. I refilled the pitcher and poured the soapy water over it. That did nothing, too.

This was going to be one of those really long hair-washing experiences, wasn't it? Arg! I refilled the pitcher, brought it up to my head, started pouring, and that's when I hear the door slam open.

_"What in the WORLD are you DOING!"_ I heard Rosalie shrieking.

This is when I realized that I was mooning her. Again.

I scooted around the side of the tub quickly so my backside was facing the triptych. I don't think it would mind as much, and turned my head to look at her. She stood ramrod straight, wet sweater in a death grip in her right hand.

"I was rinsing my ha-..." I explained. Or at least I tried to.

_"With DIRTY WATER?"_ Rosalie seemed beyond reason in her anger.

"It's not" _too_ "dirty!" I shouted back. "There wasn't any more clean water," _Miss Bossy-pants,_ "so I was saving water by using the water in the tub!" I tried to look as fierce as she looked, but that was kind of hard blinking not-too-dirty water out of my eyes and being naked as a jay-bird at that.

_"You were WHAT?"_ She angrily tossed the sweater toward the table, and even though I expected it this time, it was still amazing to watch it unfurl perfectly over the back of the chair farthest from us.

But why did Rosalie have to be shouting all the time? I had had enough.

"Look, Miss High and Mighty, there's the Depression on; haven't you heard? You shouldn't waste water!"

"'You shouldn't ...'" Rosalie repeated my words in disbelief. She blinked once, then her features settled from confusion of what I said to angry determination. She marched right up to the tub and pointed down at the water, as if she were accusing it of something.

"Do you see this water? _Do you see it?"_ I saw the soapy water just fine, thank you. _"This_ is _waste_ water." She picked up the towel at her feet and jerked me to mine, wrapping me in the towel, disgust written across every line in her face.

But then she stepped back. No, she staggered back.

_"Oh, my God. OH, MY GOD!"_ She nearly screamed.

"What?" I shouted, shocked, surprised, scared.

"Tell me you didn't rinse yourself in _that water_. Tell me you didn't do that!" She stood as far back from me as the cabin allowed.

I glared at her.

What? What was I supposed to say? She told me not to tell her.

She stood there, vibrating in place, seeming barely in control of herself.

I couldn't stand it anymore. "I used soap, and I _did_ use the pitcher of clean wa-..."

"Come here!" She shouted at me as she closed the distance between us. She grabbed my arm and pulled me to the door, opening it.

"What do you see outside?" She demanded angrily.

Okay, Bella, calm down. Deep breaths. She's angry, but that doesn't mean you have to be. She's shouting at you. She's always shouting at you. That doesn't mean you have to shout back. Don't descend to her level.

She's always shouting at me. That doesn't mean I have to cry, either.

I bit my lip, and held my tears in with all my might, and tried to respond as calmly as I could.

"Um, clouds?"

_"And?"_ Well, at least she wasn't shouting anymore. Maybe it would be nice if she were nice, but beggars can't be choosers.

"Trees?"

_"AND?"_ So much for not shouting, although I guess that wasn't a shout, technically.

"Um, snow?"

_"Ah-maz-ing!"_ She twisted the knife of that word with enough sarcasm to ... to I don't know what ... but it didn't kill me. For a vampire hell-bent on killing me, she was either doing a terrible job or she was taking her own too sweet time, God damn it.

"Now, girl, tell me how much water that snow could make. Enough potable, _clean_, water for you to drink for the rest of your life?"

She didn't even pause to let me answer.

"Enough potable water for you to drink for the rest of your life if you had never met a vampire and died a natural death seventy years from now, _and bathe, and wash your hair with ... FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? CLEAN WATER, JUST OUTSIDE THIS DOOR?"_

_"And, oh my!"_ It looked like she wasn't finished with her speech nor with her sarcasm. "Did it snow last year? Might it snow again next year? So that means that _every year_ there's more than enough water for you to bathe and wash your hair with _clean_ water _and have enough water left for you to drink for the rest of your life ... every year just right outside this door?"_

She glared at me, and I dropped my eyes.

"But the Depression," I argued meekly.

"'The Depre...'" She gaped at me, open mouthed, then brought her palm to her forehead, slapping herself soundly. It sounded like two boulders careening off each other in an avalanche. I flinched back at the sound.

She noticed. She was about to do more shouting I was sure, but she snapped her mouth shut, swallowed hard, closed her eyes, becoming utterly still. She stood there for one second, then opened her black eyes and regarded me with an indecipherable look.

She picked me up, placing me by the triptych and went back to the door, hanging her head outside, breathing in big gulps of air.

"Listen to me," she commanded when she turned back to me. "The Depression is a convenient little economic fiction invented by fat little pin-headed economists in Washington, D.C., dressed in their pin-striped suits so they can continue to suck money away from real commerce to line their fat little pockets with their fat little paychecks. The Depression talks about the economy of the Nation, it doesn't talk about you, and it doesn't talk about me. Do you know what this means?"

She stared at me intensely, seeing if I was following what she said, but then turned thoughtful.

"It means," she said quietly, "that you don't have to economize, because of this abundance right here." Here she waved out the open door to the snow-covered ground. "That is the reality you face, not this set of economic indicators called the Depression that has nothing to do with you here."

And then she almost looked mournful. "And haven't I provided every material need you've requested? Haven't I provided the sheets for you to sleep on? The wood to keep you warm? Haven't I given you the food you need to eat? And even the tooth powder for afterward?"

I wanted to respond: _'No, you gave me more than what I asked for,'_ but I didn't get to say that because she was still going on her tirade.

"You don't have to have to live a rationed life, as if you were saving supplies for the soldiers in the War. You don't have to live your life small, as if some economist dictated that you could go only so far, and no farther ..."

She was looking like she was going to continue on how I could live this wonderful and grand life, but I interrupted her quietly.

"I don't have to live my life as if some vampire was going to kill me someday soon?"

Rosalie's face hardened. She crossed her arms, and they hardened into place, too.

"Every mortal dies, girl. That's why _you_ have to seize today, because you're not guaranteed tomorrow. No mortal is. _Think!_ and understand this."

She marched right up to me in that powerful, graceful and commanding way she walked.

But my voice stopped what she was planning to do.

"Just say it, Rosalie," I whispered.

Everything about her changed: she went from furious to cautious in a heartbeat.

"Say what?" she asked guardedly.

"Just say I'm stupid." She hissed in a breath, but I continued, looking at her feet, clad in those beautiful leather boots. "I know you're thinking it; you're always thinking it. Just say it and be done with it."

_"You're WHAT?"_ she shouted.

"You don't have to pretend, Rosalie, it's okay." I tried reassuring her. "I can't even answer three little essay questions without you getting angry at me ... I can't even call you kind ... I can't even wash my ha-..."

But she interrupted my explanation. _"Who even asks themselves those questions!"_ See, I couldn't even tell her I was stupid without making her angry. I couldn't even explain the first thing without her latching onto it and tearing it apart.

"Who even contemplates answering those questions, when asked ... even once in their entire life?" she dared me to answer her with her glare.

But then she changed course.

"Listen to me," she started. "L-... girl, look at me," she commanded.

I looked up at her, catching that slip in her words again, but concentrating on concentrating on her. Her black eyes bore into mine as she spoke each word quickly but carefully.

"Who of the three thousand people in your little town discerned our nature, hm? Who saw our differences, went to her library and found every piece of damning evidence over the past year to paint a complete picture? Who?" Her eyes penetrated me.

"Who in all of Rochester did that? Who in all of Atlanta, Georgia? I've passed thousands of humans. Thousands! And how many knew what I was, unless I revealed myself as I killed them? How many? Not one. Not one until you."

"Who sees everything as it is — except in herself, of course ... or maybe you do, but your humility simply refuses to acknowledge the good about your own self? — everything in its purest, most real form? Who _looks_ and _sees_ and is not afraid to look and to see what everyone else turns from in horror or in ennui?"

"Who?" she asked, looking pointedly at me.

"But I don't know _anything!_ You're always saying that." I argued.

"Am I?" she asked in disbelief. "But not knowing a thing, not knowing many things, even, does not make you stupid. Listen to me and understand, you _are_ intelligent, much more so even with your lack of knowledge. For in even this lack you still grasp the essentials, you do not confuse the form with the substance, as most others do."

I shook my head, not understanding a word she said. Not understanding or not believing. "Rosalie ..." I sighed out.

"No," she said, "no: you listen to me now. The worst judge of yourself seems to be you. Don't judge yourself harshly, and don't put your harsh judgments of yourself into my thoughts, because they do not contain them."

"What do your thoughts contain?" I dared to ask.

She picked up the two pitchers by the tub and stepped right up to me.

"This," she said. "You are so concerned about waste?" But then she flinched.

_She flinched? Why?_

Then she grimaced and took a step back from me. She started over.

"Well, your concern of waste has earned us this: what are these made of?" She held up the pitchers for my inspection, I suppose.

"Um, wood?" I was pretty awesome at guessing the obvious.

She grimaced again. She appeared to be in some internal struggle, which played itself across her face. The struggle seemed to resolve itself into something; I didn't know whether she won against herself or she lost, but she finally did speak.

"You have such a lovely voice," she said quietly.

I laughed. What was with her? One minute she's shouting at me, and the next minute she's onto some other topic which involves complimenting something about me that nobody in the world had ever noticed because it just wasn't there to be noticed. _I_ had a _lovely voice?_ _I_ was _smart? _She must have confused me with somebody else. She must have confused me with her.

"Why do you laugh?" she asked, confused. Maybe I had offended her, but I just couldn't believe that _she_ believed what she said.

"You voice _is_ lovely; can't you take even one compliment? It's a sweet alto voice, not deep like a contralto, not airy like a soprano, but grounded, assured, steady and calm and at the same time rich and nuanced. Do you sing?"

I shook my head, amazed beyond belief. Did she just say all those things about my plain, plain voice? Was she asking me if I sung? She must be joking, but I managed to squeak out a _no_ in response.

She sighed. "A pity," she said, but then continued down a different track, "A pity not to hear that beautiful voice singing; a pity to hear that voice not saying what it means with confidence, but constantly hesitating over the drone of indecision, hm?"

She looked a me significantly. "Do you take my meaning?"

I tried not to blush. I tried not to drop my eyes to the ground when I replied.

I really tried.

But it didn't work out so well, that trying.

"Sometimes," I whispered my answer, "I don't know what to say," and I wanted to add _'because I'm stupid, remember?'_ but I didn't want another lecture.

But I was getting it anyway. Her hand reached out and lifted my chin, gently. "Then say nothing until you do know, and not one moment before. A lady is admired for her silence, yes, and when she does speak, she is admired more for her wisdom and insight."

Her eyes penetrated mine, and I couldn't drop mine. I swallowed, feeling the power of her intense gaze.

She dropped her hand from my chin and turned away toward the tub, "Now ..." she started.

"But I'm not a l-..." I started to whisper to her back, but she turned around so quickly that it made _me _dizzy.

"What?" she exclaimed. _"What!"_

She rounded on me, and her eyes now penetrated mine, but they weren't sharing eyes: they were dangerous.

I looked down, but I did know what I was saying: "Rosalie, I'm not you."

_"Thank goodness for that!"_ she roared, right in my face.

I wasn't getting through to her, so I tried another way: "Rosalie, I'm not a lady."

This, of course, set her off. I should have known that, shouldn't I have?

"Don't ever think that! Don't ever say that again!" She was incensed. "Do you know what a lady is? A lady is a woman — _any woman!_ — who knows she is, who respects others and who demands that same respect! That's all! A lady can come from any walk of life, she could be a scullery maid in New York or a cowgirl in Montana. All she needs to do is drop what rôle others try to force on her and instead seize her own destiny. _That_ is a lady! That could be you ... that _is_ you, but you must choose that on your own. You must make that choice. You _must."_

I stood there, right in front of an angry vampire, with nothing but a towel wrapping me. I felt at a loss — entirely lost and insignificant, and I was being scolded for being that way.

Two tears stained my cheeks, but that didn't stop Rosalie's determination.

"You must," she whispered fervently, "and, by God, you _will."_

"Even if you have to force me to?" I asked quietly.

I looked up at her in the surprising stillness and silence that followed my question. She was _smiling._

"Yes," she responded evenly. "You will choose your own destiny freely, even if I must force you to do so."

I didn't get it. I didn't get any of it. I was her prisoner, but I was supposed to choose my own destiny freely, even if she had to force me to. None of what she said made any sense whatsoever.

_"Why?"_ I was asking that a lot these days. I had never asked that much at all before my life turned upside down and backwards.

Her smile widened. Was she toying with me?

"You will know the answer to that yourself, for, after all, a lady knows. A _smart lady_ like _you_ knows, doesn't she?" _Hmmphf! _She _was _toying with me. "But first we must start simply. It is good and proper to economize where there is a lack, but economy where there is plenty? That exposes one to ridicule and is not smart and is not ladylike behavior." Her tone was gently chiding.

"So," she was back to the businesslike tone, "we will do the bath properly, from the start. But before that ..." She held up the pitchers. "I had asked you what these were made of for a reason, but now I must abandon that Socratic line of inquiry and simply tell you: wood absorbs and then imparts scent. Putting the dirty water in these? Not _prudent_." I thought she would have said: _'not smart,'_ but I guess she was done rubbing it in for now. "Now, whatever comes out of them will have that scent. In your attempt to conserve, you actually ended up wasting, for now I must destroy these, because I cannot bear the ..." She broke off, then began again: "because they must be destroyed."

She walked over to the stove, opened the vent and then the front doors, and then sundered the pitchers that she held in the fire.

She looked at me from the stove as I watched the fire lick at the splinters of wood that used to be the pitchers I had just used. The pitchers I had just ruined, according to Rosalie.

"So it goes with all unnecessary scrimping." She closed doors of the stove and dampened it and then looked at me with an almost contemptuous look. A look that said I should have known better.

"But do you know the worst thing about scrimping? The worse thing about economizing? It isn't that the whole concept is simply wrong, for to get more, one needs to expend more, not less. It isn't that. The worst thing is this: the one economizing becomes _less than._ _Oh!_ they say, _I will economize to do my part._ But that mantra soon becomes: _Oh! I will economize because I am not worthy of my part._ And they become less and less, sucking all around them into their pit of wretched economy. _Oh!_ they say, _I will wash myself in dirty water, because I don't deserve to be touched by clean water!"_

At that last statement, she gave me a hard look, and I felt my worth sink lower than the floor.

"Don't be that person," she commanded. "Your clean heart deserves clean water ... and so much more," she whispered quietly.

Then her attention shifted from me, as I still reeled under the weight of her words.

"Now," she said, "to get rid of that _wasted_ water."

She walked right past me, as if I wasn't there, to the tub. She picked up the tub full of soapy water like she was picking up a glass of water to drink from. She then angled it toward the door and then threw it in that direction.

I looked on in shock. She was there, but then suddenly she was gone. The door was suddenly open. The tub flew through the entrance, unimpeded, and was caught, midair, by Rosalie, standing outside.

I didn't even see her blur. I didn't see the door open, but there she was throwing the tub, and there she was, an instant later, catching it through an opened door that wasn't open before. I swallowed. I also didn't see one drop of water splash out of the tub. Not when she picked it up inside, not when she threw it, and not when she caught it again outside.

From outside, Rosalie's eyes narrowed as she looked at me. She put the tub down and marched through the doorway to stand right in front of me.

"Amazing — _isn't it?_ — what a vampire can do. Makes you wish you could be one, doesn't it! Makes you wish you could be strong and powerful and fast and _cold_ _and dead and consumed by want, doesn't it!"_ Her quiet, angry speech grew and grew in volume until she was shouting in my face.

"Watching everything change and grow and live around you as you are trapped, frozen and unchanging, in this cursed eternity," she continued more thoughtfully, that is if _spiteful_ could be considered _thoughtful. _"Watching everything whither and die around you, and all you can do is watch, helplessly. Why? Because everything you touch _dies." _She stared at me with jealous, hate-filled eyes.

"I..." I began, but I didn't get to complete that thought, and my attempt only set her off like an explosive.

_"So tempting, being a vampire, isn't it!"_ She screamed at me, dropping all pretense of civility. _"Isn't it!"_

I stared at her, stunned into silence.

"Well, it isn't. Don't you _ever_ forget that." She stated forcefully, looking at me angrily then turned, went to the stove and picked up the pot and headed for the door.

"Why are you being so mean to me?" I pleaded to her back.

Why was she so mean today? Making me feel stupid for not being smart. Being angry at me for not being a lady. Accusing me of wanting to be a vampire. I had thought of none of these things before. None of this was my fault, but I got all the blame for all of it.

Her back stiffened, and the pot she was holding slipped through her fingers, crashing on the floor, soaking her. She turned on me, and I noticed steam coming off her soaked half.

She didn't seem to notice that, however: in two strides she was right in front of me.

_"'Why am I mean to you?_' I cannot believe you just asked me that!" Her beautiful scent was mixed with the smell of the steam evaporating off her body, and I was brought back to the memory of my dream of the rain by the honeysuckle garden that was her. "Why am I mean to you? Didn't you hear what I just told you? Can't you get it through your pretty little head that I'm a vampire? This is what I am! I am entirely your opposite, don't you understand that, girl? The closer you draw to me is the closer you draw to your death, and one day, perhaps not today, perhaps not tomorrow, but one day, I _will _kill you. That's what I am, that's what I do."

I recollected myself from her intoxicating scent and from the force of her words.

Wait. _Pretty little head?_

She stepped back from me, and now I could think a little more clearly other than wanting just to breathe the air she perfumed.

"I am entirely your opposite." She said this quietly, her voice filled with something like regret, but then her features hardened and she spoke normally, her voice clear and determined. "There is nothing in me of kindness, of any good whatsoever, so don't look for it, and don't assign to me things you hope to find, because you won't find them. They are not there to find."

Then she looked at me and said the most hurtful thing: "Stay away from me."

"For your own good," she continued, "stay away from me, because there is nothing that I ..." and she stopped and shook her head ruefully.

Now _her _eyes dropped and she stood like this for a long minute, looking so lost.

"Rosalie, you're not lik-..." I started. I just couldn't stop being affected by her loneliness, but, fast as mercury, her mood shifted again and her head snapped up.

"Now, stay right there; don't move," she commanded, back to the cold and distant Rosalie, talking right through what I was saying as if she didn't hear me speaking at all. "Since you seem incapable of bathing yourself properly, you've forced me to do that for you. I'll be back shortly."

She turned and went back to the pot.

"This will not be a pleasant experience," she said as she shot a warning look over her shoulder. Then I thought I heard her mutter something ... something like "for either of us." She put her hand to the door.

"Didn't you ever think," I whispered; Rosalie stopped, back stiffening, but I pressed forward trying to break through the cold and hard Rosalie she was trying to be to the real, kind Rose that I knew to be hiding underneath that façade. I tried, even though I just knew more shouting was in store for me. "Didn't you ever think that maybe you could ease back into to talking again? That you could just not ... you know ..."

Rosalie put down the pot and shut the door and turned to me.

"I _do_ know," she said seriously but not, um, _shoutingly_ ... is that a word? "I have thought about that. I have thought about it for three long days of my Eternity in silence. Have you?"

She didn't wait for my answer, for she already knew how inadequate it would be.

"I thought about me being in Eternity: I have all the 'time' in the world, don't I? So I could just average out the bitter pills — the medicine you _need_ to take — over time, couldn't I? But you are mortal, girl, and this might be your last day. This might be your last second, and I can't average that discontinuity into this moment. I am in the Eternal Now, and you only have now. Now is all we have."

She shook her head and continued: "Now is all we have, and if I don't say the things that need to be said now, then I won't be able to say them later, because later you will be dead and, God willing, in Heaven, and anything I say then will ..."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, suddenly becoming aware of something, shock making her face blank. "Oh! Are you saying my cursed nature is an offense to your purity? Are you saying that the more I talk, the more I corrupt you? That my words damage your hope to obtain Heaven?"

"Is that what you're telling me?" She looked at me in wonder.

I couldn't keep up with her, but I knew I had to speak quickly before she convinced herself never to speak to me again.

"Rosalie, I ..."

She held up her hand, silencing me. "You are right to think that," she stated flatly and turned on her heel. In one motion she picked up the pot and was out the door, not looking back once. The door slammed shut, echoing in the silence of her departure.

Somehow I felt that by slamming the door closed, she was trying to shut herself away from me completely, that she was trying to close off her heart that I knew she had, although I couldn't hear it beating.

I heard that door slam, and it was a painful sound to endure.

* * *

**A/N:** Ever wonder why your parents, or your grandparents, or ... your great-grandparents (Hey, what are you doing here reading this fan-fiction, being under 17 and all?) do those strange things they do?

You know what I'm talking about, right? How they wash the paper plates to use them for the next party? How they save the water from the bath to flush the toilet or water the plants? How they take a bar of soap with them on their swim at the town reservoir? How they eat the whole apple, even the core, and then plant the seeds? How they vote and participate in politics and argue about the issues of the day with passion, as if these issues really mattered? How they honor the veterans, even when it was unpopular? How they turn off the lights when they leave a room?

Why do they do these things in public, embarrassing you to hope that other people will think you're with another group and not _them?_

Why? Maybe ask them. Maybe ask them what it was like to fight in the Great War (you know: "World War I"). Maybe ask them what it was like to grow up during the Depression, having to share a bed, and being grateful for the heat the siblings gave, and having to watch the rich kids to eat a whole apple, not even giving them the core. Maybe ask them what it was like before TV, when tuning into the calming voice over the radio to hear the fireside chat was a ray of hope in the bleak day after queuing for work that wasn't available for anybody that day.

Maybe ask them what it was to grow up building toward this age of abundance that they maybe didn't have?


	36. This Will Hurt — I: Ice Knives

**Chapter Summary: **A three way tie. Either the malnutrition, or the hypothermia, … or I would kill her. I could only handle one problem at a time, and the most pressing one was the most dangerous one: me. As always. But if I didn't do something about her scent right now …

* * *

"This will hurt."

Rosalie looked me dead in the eye, inches from me.

Oh, we were both naked.

"Rosalie," I pleaded, not just a little bit frightened, "we don't have to do this right now, do we? We can wait. We can wait just a little whil-..."

She looked at me with black, hungry eyes, blinked at me, and then swallowed.

"No, now," she said firmly. "Right now. _I_ can't wait, not anymore."

I couldn't help but sympathize with her. She _wanted me_ so badly that it was painful for her. I could see that, but still ...

"It ... it won't hurt _too_ much?" I asked, "... will it?" I felt any confidence I may have had fade away under her determined stare.

"... will it?" I looked to her for some reassurance.

But I didn't find anything there to reassure me, no matter how hard my pleading eyes looked.

"Agony is agony," she stated so calmly, so factually. "It won't matter to you that the pain you feel now may be more or less than any other pain you experience. All you will feel is this pain now. It will hurt until I stop; it will hurt after I stop, and I won't stop until I'm finished, but _I_ need to do this to you right now."

We _really _needed to work on her bedside manner.

But I saw that there was no stopping her. Not now. She was really going to do this to me.

I closed the gap between us, wrapped my arms around her tightly and shut my eyes, resting my head on her shoulder.

I fit into her body perfectly.

I felt her stiffen, but she didn't push me away. She was so cold. So, so cold. But my skin touching her everywhere was on fire with the feel of her on me. And her scent. _Oh, God, her scent!_

"Did you want me to tell you when I ..." she began to ask.

I interrupted her; I couldn't stand the suspense. "Just do it! Don't tell me. I can't stand it anymore! Just do it fast, okay?"

"'Quickly,' not 'fast.'" Rosalie corrected in a lecturing tone.

_"Rosalie, __please__!"_ I shouted. I gripped her as hard as I could, burying my head in the hollow between her shoulder and her neck, hoping that would somehow help.

I felt her shift slightly. Her hands reached down, and her lips brushed against my exposed neck ...

_Oh, God!_ I thought. This was really going to happen. This was happening right now.

Rosalie lifted up the pot full of Belle Fourche river water and poured it over our heads. I felt the water wash the strawberry-scented shampoo from my hair and cascade down the rest of my body.

She was right. The cold of the water knifed into me. It hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt so much that I couldn't think. Everything in me went rigid as I squeezed everything in my body, trying to shrink myself into a point smaller than nothing to disappear from that water caressing me with agonizing tendrils. I clasped myself even tighter to Rosalie. I think I might have been functional if the water washed over me for a second or two, but it seemed to go on and on. All I could do was to hold onto her with all my might.

I might have, in my squeezing, squeezed out a little pee? I'm not sure, but I regretted the drink I took earlier.

"You know you're only hurting yourself more this way," Rosalie said. "What I am is colder than the water. You can feel that, can't you?"

I didn't feel that, and I didn't know that. I just knew that the water had stopped knifing into me. That's what the water felt like: knives made from ice, and not just any ice, but _cold_ ice. If you live in the New West, then you know the difference. I guess she must have stopped pouring. But where I felt Rosalie? It was cold, but it was hot. It was like fire or electricity. By clinging to her, I was clinging to my life. That's how it felt, anyway.

But I wasn't feeling very communicative. I was in so much pain that I was glued to her, frozen into position. And I couldn't move, probably not even to save my life.

But Rosalie wasn't asking that much of me, anyway.

"Can you wash yourself?" she asked as she touched the bar of soap to my back.

"N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-..." I was clasped tightly to her. This was a good thing, because I would have probably shaken myself to death otherwise.

I felt the lathered washcloth go up and down over my back, around my neck and shoulders, and over and then just below my butt. She was actually washing me this time. Not like for my hair. She had poured that cold, cold, painfully cold water over my head but told me beforehand that I needed to wash my own hair; I needed to rub in the shampoo myself. I had asked her why couldn't she do that, too. She told me that I wouldn't like it all that much if she pulled the hair out of my scalp or pushed her fingers through my skull and turned my brain into gray paste if she were the one to lather me. I guess she had a point there.

I felt her hands leave my back, and I felt and heard her washing her back and sides.

"I'm going to have to rinse off the soap now," she said quietly.

I couldn't speak anymore. What was I going to say, anyway? That it was okay? It definitely wasn't okay. I just held her, as I felt her hands leave my back, reaching down again.

Oh, no.

I felt the water, or ice knives, again. I squeezed my eyes closed so tightly that I saw white. I now had a really, really bad headache. That was a pain — _ha-ha_ — but it wasn't the worst thing happening to me.

"You may let go now; I have to do your front side." Rosalie said.

Doing my front side: that would be the worst thing.

It would have been nice to do what she asked, but I found I couldn't. I couldn't move at all, I just held on to her, and as much as I tried, my eyes stayed tightly shut and my arms stayed locked around her.

"Did you hear me?" she asked, but patiently, I was glad to hear. "You can let go now."

"I-I-I-I-I-I-I-..." I sucked in a gasp of wonderfully Rosalie-scented air and tried again, "I-I-I-I-I-I-I c-c-c-c-c-c-..." I wasn't making much progress.

"Hush, now, hush," she said gently. "If I have to move you, I might hurt you. Do you understand me? I might snap your arms in half."

I couldn't respond, and I couldn't move.

Rosalie sighed. "Listen. I'm going to move your arms. If you feel the slightest bit of discomfort, let me know. Scream if you have to. Do you understand?"

I nodded my head jerkily.

Rosalie reached behind her head with both hands. I felt her index fingers and thumbs encircled my wrists. They were cold, but they were warm? I didn't understand it. She pulled my hands off her neck and made a little space between her and my arms. She was so gentle moving my arms. She was so, so gentle.

She made enough space between her and my arms for her to slip easily out of my embrace. She didn't move me at all, she simply stepped around me in the tub so that she was now behind me.

"I'll be as fast as I can," Rosalie said kindly.

But what happened next wasn't kind. I didn't know I could experience more pain, but then she poured more of that cold, cold water over me.

"Keep your eyes closed," she whispered in my ear, and it was a good thing she said that, because right after that I felt the washcloth over my face, soaping it.

"Okay, now I'm going to do the rest of your front. Keep your eyes closed until I rinse you," she said as she continued to soap me. The washcloth moved quickly over my front ...

Of course, it would move quickly, I thought regretfully. There just wasn't all that much to wash. Not much at all.

"Would you separate your legs, please? I need to wash your legs and private areas."

It would have been nice to be able to do that, especially since I think I did have a bit of an accident, but I couldn't move.

"Can you move your legs?" she asked after a few seconds. I just jerked my head back and forth in a _no._

I felt her arm snake around my waist, and she lifted me just off the tub. I felt her leg nudge between my legs, then she let me back down, and my legs natural flowed around her leg, separating.

And my frozen brain thought, _wow!_ I suppose she could have forced my legs apart, but she made my non-working body do all the work. _She's so smart! She's so __wise__! She's so gentle in all her strength._

Rosalie must have knelt down, because her arm released me and I felt legs being soaped, back and front, inner and outer.

Then I felt one, two, three quick, soft swipes on my nether region, and one, two wipes between my cheeks.

But I didn't have any time to think about that or to react to it. What would I do, anyway, die?

Yes, that's exactly what I would do, or that's what it felt like. The water from the pot washed over my face, and I couldn't hold it in anymore: I sucked in some of that icy water, hurting my insides as the agony seared my outsides, and I screamed.

But this time the rinse didn't take all that long — just forever — and before I knew it, I was dried, sitting on a pile of towels near the stove, wrapped in a spare blanket. Did Rosalie know ahead of time she would need to do this? Is this why she got the extra bedding? Could she see into the future?

I didn't know. I just absorbed the heat from the freshly stoked stove as Rosalie fetched more Belle Fourche river water to be heated on it. Each second in front of the heat of the fire I became more human, returning from just being in agony from the cold and nothing else.

As I was sucking in the heat from the stove, sitting upright, I remembered how Rosalie came back from the river with a pot full of ice-cold water.

...

She looked so furious with me, like it was my fault that she decided never to speak with me, yet her eyes were the purest gold.

She wasn't breathing.

"Rosalie," I pleaded, "you can't just stop talking to me. You can't."

Her eyes flashed black, and she hissed at me, looking at me in pure hatred.

"Rosalie, you …" I began, but she interrupted me.

"You are so lucky," she stated each word quietly and deliberately.

I just looked at her. I didn't feel particularly _lucky_, as she had put it.

"You are so lucky that I had already promised you that I would _try_ to tell you when I do kill you, otherwise I would have never spoken to you again." She put the pot on the stove to heat the water for the coming bath (a fat lot of good _that _did) and turned and looked at me, taking me in with one contemptuous look. "That would have been my promise, my pie-crust promise, because you would have said something right away that needed correcting — as you always do — and where would I be then?"

"Pie-crust promise?" Well, she was talking again. That also meant she wasn't making sense … again.

She looked at me with crossed arms and shook her head. "You really are an untouched blossom, aren't you? _'Easily made, easily broken,'_ that's what a pie-crust promise is."

She didn't add the word _'idiot,'_ but I could see her struggling not to.

"Oh," I said meekly, but she kept saying things about me that just weren't true, so I added: "Rosalie, I don't know why you keep saying these things about me because I'm just not these things that you say I am. I'm not smart compared to you, I'm definitely not beautiful, and I'm not pure, I'm just …"

"Royce King II, and before him, two security guards whose names I do not know, and before them, Andrew King and before him John Parker before him John Candler III, or Trey, as he liked to be called, in Atlanta, and before him Smith Aldington. What was the name of the last person you killed?"

I looked at her. She wasn't joking when she asked me. She was serious. So I answered her seriously.

"I haven't killed anyone," I said quietly.

"Yesterday, most recently," she continued, "and only because I haven't had time yet today. When was the last time you cursed God?"

I blinked.

"Ever?" she asked.

"Have you ever coveted anything or anyone? Have you ever thought ill of anyone?" she continued.

I had her there, but I wasn't pleased to admit this one.

"Sometimes I don't think so well of, … well, you …" I answered quietly, looking down to the ground, wishing my eyes could bore a hole into it so I could bury myself there.

"I didn't ask if you thought _accurately_ of anyone," her voice smiled, "I asked if you thought ill of anyone."

I blushed.

"How about lying, when was the last time you lied?" she continued

"I …" I began and looked up at her, but then something much more important than me not knowing this answer occurred to me. "You lie?" I asked her timidly.

_"I am a vampire,"_ she explained forcefully, as if she were stating the obvious. I guess she was. "Everything I am is a lie; every action I take among humans is a deception."

"Do you lie to me?" I asked her.

She looked at me, at naïve little me. "You've never lied, have you?"

I blushed, knowing she, this cosmopolitan vampire, thought less of me, this unsophisticated country girl. "I'm not all these things you say I am."

"Oh, and I'm not kind and not funny because I say that, too," she countered.

"Funny?" I asked.

She smirked. "Perhaps you had a bit too much medicine to remember that little declaration of yours."

"Oh," I said, as my face colored more. Now I did remember that night, millions of years ago — or was it the night before last night? — when I called her kind and funny and tried to set her up with a vampire boyfriend.

"You see," she said, "we both deny what the other says about us, because we both believe what we think we know. The difference between us is that I know I'm right about me, by my very nature, and I know you're wrong about you, again by your very nature."

"Rosalie," I shook my head, "you're wrong. I'm not … I'm just not …"

"Your humility is only strengthening my side of the argument." She had that tone of voice like she just won. She was so stubborn. She just couldn't be made to see me as I was.

...

My rueful reflection by the stove was interrupted when Rosalie returned and placed the full pot back on the stove. Then she picked me up, just like the pot — so easily — and placed me on the bed, dressing me in panties, tee shirt and PJs, putting me under the covers. I felt like complaining that I had just woken up, but I was too exhausted to do so.

I must have drifted off to sleep, because sometime later Rosalie was sitting beside me on the bed. She had the steak cut into thin strips on the plate, arranged as spokes from a wheel's hub, and in the center of that she had cut an egg lengthwise so that it fell out like a flower with six petals. It was so beautifully arranged. It was something that could only come from her.

I was still groggy, so she fed me the steak and egg (which, being pickled, tasted a little salty and briny), then she fed me one of the canned beets from a bowl. After eating that I was drifting off again, but she forced me up, ignoring my faint complaints, and forced me to brush my teeth.

_Meanie._ There, see, I could think ill of her.

But I was in no position to renew that argument. I leaned on her pretty heavily as she lead me back into bed. I don't know why I was so tired.

* * *

**A/N:** I am indebted to Consultant by Day's story "Rosalie's Revenge" for providing the names of the men who assaulted Rosalie and for the order in which she killed them.


	37. This Will Hurt — II: King Midas

**Chapter Summary: **Wow! She stayed! She said she couldn't, but she _did! _Even after my embarrassing dream that she heard. _And_ she's going to tell me a story! I hope it has a happy ending …

* * *

Rosalie woke me up again. It was still light outside. She asked me why I was crying. I didn't know why.

I didn't know why I was crying. I must have been dreaming about something sad, but I couldn't remember. I was about to tell her this, but her look stopped me.

She was regarding me with that speculative look. She reached out to my face …

Everything in me tensed as her finger touched my cheek, capturing a tear.

She withdrew her hand from my face and looked at the tear on her finger for a second, then touched it to her lips. She stiffened and her eyes when from pitch black to pure gold in an instant, and she looked at me with awe and the deepest sadness.

"So sad," she sighed.

"Why are you so sad?"

Oh, she was talking about _me._ I thought she was talking about _her._ I wanted to answer, but my voice was stuck in my throat, and before I could swallow to clear it, she climbed into bed with me, lying beside me, taking my face in her hands, looking at me, sadly.

After a second, she closed the distance between us, and her lips touched my cheek, and she whispered, "so sad!" as I felt her kiss a tear away.

She kept kissing my tears away, each time sighing out, "so sad!" Then she pulled back and looked at me, and I looked at her, and she said, almost pleading with me, "Don't be sad!"

Then she wrapped me in her arms, and she kissed me. She kissed me full on the lips, so gently, so caringly, so lov-… well, so caringly.

And I wrapped my arms about her and returned her kiss with mine. I returned it with all I could. I returned it with everything that I was.

And she rolled on top of me, and I felt the weight of her, her strength … _I felt her._ And it felt so right, her on top of me. It felt so right. And she pushed, _oh! so gently,_ her legs between my legs, and I felt _her_.I felt her touching me, embracing me, even through my PJs and her clothes.

And I held her as tightly as I could, pulling her down to me, wanting her, pressing myself up to her, giving myself to her.

And she broke that kiss and kissed me again. And kissed me again. And she kissed me on the lips, then on the chin, then on the throat, then on the neck. Each kiss so sweet and so gentle. And it was hard to breathe, and every breath was _her, _and impossible to think: all I could do is want her. That's all I could do; that's all I wanted to do.

And then I felt her teeth graze my skin right at my neck, and I gasped out a _"Please! Oh, please! Oh, Rose, bite me!"_

And her teeth sunk into my flesh, and there must have been pain, but I didn't feel it, because I felt_ so, so connected to her._ I was _with_ her, and she was _with_ me and _in_ me and _taking me._ And I felt a flash of heat as my loins exploded, and all sense went away.

But eventually the pain of it _did _become too much as my senses returned. I felt a pulling on my neck, and it began to hurt so much.

"Ahm, Rosalie, stop. It hurts." But she wasn't stopping. I felt the pulling, more and more, and I felt myself weakening. It felt like before: I felt myself lessening as the pain increased.

"Please, Rosalie, stop. Please stop. Please." I begged, and I tried to use my arms to push her away, but they were so leaden that I couldn't lift them from her back.

"Please, Rosalie, I'm dying." I felt it. I was dying. "I'm … I'm dy-…"

...

Then everything shifted.

_"WAKE UP NOW!"_

Everything shifted like what happens when you fall off your bed when you're asleep. That's when I realized that I was dreaming. Rosalie was standing over me, I could see her silhouette in the darkness, arms crossed, body stiff, and I heard the echo in my ears of her shout. She must have shouted at me to wake me.

She leaned toward me in the darkness, and I saw her white, white, pale white skin and the blackness of her eyes from the moonlight from the window.

"That is what I am," she hissed at me, pure hatred in every word.

_Oh, God!_ I must have been talking in my sleep! I must have been … _God!_ … I must have been saying those things out loud.

Without ceremony, Rosalie lifted me up and raced me to the outhouse, and I felt the heat from the pail of embers dangling beneath me. She had the outhouse lit and heated by the time I sat. She held out her hand, and as I handed her the panties and PJs bottoms, I saw her unmoving chest and her golden eyes regarding me, and I realized she wasn't breathing anymore … because of me. I couldn't look at her. I peed as she left the outhouse. She was gone and back in an instant, holding out a washcloth that she wet in the heated water and lathered with the bar of soap.

I took it and washed myself _there_, not even daring to look at her anymore.

She rinsed me, handed me a towelette, and a fresh pair of panties and PJ bottoms. I dried myself and put on the new clothes, eyes downcast the whole time.

She handed me the tin of lime then extinguished the candle. We were outside the outhouse, me in her arms, and the towelette and washcloth in a ball, flying leftward far, far away from us. We raced back toward the cabin, but she stopped suddenly. We were by the tree with the cross in it.

_Oh, no!_

She put me on my seat and stood a few paces away from me, looking away from me. The silence lasted a few seconds.

I sat there in that few seconds of silence in that beautiful, cold moonlit night, as I looked at that beautiful, cold Rosalie.

She still looked away from me when she said quietly, "It's not like that."

I said the only thing I could: "I'm sorry." Shame washed through me.

She looked at me, but I couldn't tell what color her eyes were in the moonlight coming from the waxing moon behind her. She spoke quietly again but this time more forcefully. "It's not like that. Do you understand me?"

It looked like she was trying to tell me something, but I didn't understand what. I shook me head in my shame.

"If I were to bite you, you would not come," she explained.

"'Come'? Go where?" I didn't understand.

She looked at me steadily. "Come," she stated: "orgasm."

I looked back at her.

She sighed and waved toward my midsection.

"Oh." I said in a small voice, finally understanding. "I'm …"

"Or you would," she continued, "… but only for the same reason that a man on the gallows defecates and ejaculates and dances when hung. You would try to run, too, doing everything you could to escape from the pain."

"But you couldn't." She was so remote. "You would experience pain indescribable for three or so minutes, and then you would die. That's the only thing that would happen. Your dream was wrong, but it was right: you would die. That's all you would do. _Die_. Do you understand me?"

I looked at her.

"I'm cold," I whispered meekly.

She shook her head, picked me up, and we returned to the cabin where she placed me in the bed and tucked me in. She looked like she was going to go.

"Rosalie, please," I started.

_"What? WHAT!"_ She shouted. "'Rosalie, please'? You're going to ask me to stay, aren't you? I have to hunt. _I have to hunt!_ Or did you think your 'oh, bite me' would leave me unaffected? _With_ _that kind of blood in you? _ I have to go!"

She stared at me, murder in her eyes, murder in her voice, "I have to go, or I will kill you."

She was panting, staring at me in fury.

"If you go now, it will kill me, and you know it."

I don't know why I said that. I just knew it was true.

Rosalie became so still, staring at me through the darkness, but then I saw her move to the door.

"Please," I said.

She stopped. She stood there for a long time. I heard her hand go to the latch.

"Please," I whispered.

_"God damn it,"_ was the softest of whispers I heard coming from her by the door.

She came back.

I almost vomited with relief. She came back.

She took a chair from by the table and sat down by me, the high-back between us.

"Thank you," I whispered, pushing everything I could into my thanks.

There was nothing from Rosalie. She was trying so hard to be remote, to be far away from me.

But she was here.

I looked at her in the darkness, sitting there so rigidly. "Tell me a story," I dared to whisper.

"About what?" asked the remote and quiet voice. The voice that wasn't screaming at me.

My dare worked.

_"Anything,"_ I breathed in relief.

"All right," she responded. "This is a story about King Midas." And she told me the story.

"Once upon a time, there was a wise King over all the lands," she began, her musical voice taking on the smooth flowing lilt of the story-teller's voice.

"And the King loved his people and wanted the best for them, so he accumulated wealth of all kinds, particularly diamonds."

I thought it was gold, but I let her continue.

"But the King had one possession he prized above all the rest. He had the fairest and most beautiful daughter in the whole world, none in the kingdom came even close to rivaling her beauty. And he loved her above all other things. But he never much had time for her, for the day-to-day administration of the land and his people occupied much of his time. He was an important man and had important things to do. And there were some that faulted him as miserly, but the kingdom was prosperous, and the people employed and engaged and happy, all because of the King's providence."

Then I knew why the story was different. Rosalie's father was a banker. She was telling me the story about her family, using King Midas as an allegory.

"One day, God appeared to the King in a dream and asked, 'What would you have, if you could have anything in the world?' And the kindly King thought of his people. He thought, _'If we were to have unlimited wealth, my people would lack for nothing.'_ So he asked God to grant him the power to turn anything he touched into diamonds. God responded, 'Well, you're no Solomon, but as you wish.'"

"The next day the King awoke from his trifling dream, or so he thought, amused by it, but when he sat on his garden bench to admire his flowers, he saw it sparkling in the sun and was delighted to see his stone bench turned into a carved diamond. He shouted with glee, touching each flower, growing more and more pleased with the wealth that he was creating."

She didn't sound delighted as she told the story of the King's delight.

And then her voice grew ominous.

"But then at his brunch, when he picked up an orange to eat, it became a crystal clear diamond ball, heavy as stone in his hand, and the liquid in his gold goblet froze into a diamond pool, with the goblet itself now glass clear. And the King wondered what and how he would eat."

"But that wonderment left his mind in a flash. Because, as he was thinking this, his daughter, his only daughter, his one truly beloved treasure burst into the room."

"'Father,' she said, 'you look so pale! Whiter than snow! What is wrong?' she asked him. She then ran to embrace him."

"'Stay away from me!' the King shouted desperately."

And I remembered those were the exact words Rosalie had said to me.

"But he had said it too late, or his daughter did not believe him or did not hear him in the overflowing of concern in her heart, and she clasped him in her embrace."

"And the King screamed, for now holding him was no longer his daughter, no longer the fairest and most beautiful maiden in the kingdom. Nothing held him anymore, for she was turned into a cold, hard, translucent statue."

"The King cried out now in anguish, and begged God to rescind his gift and restore his daughter to him. But God is just and said, 'What you desired, I gave,' and left the King. And the King understood, but too, too late, and looked at the nothing that was his daughter."

She spoke this story so dispassionately, but the tears coming out of my eyes betrayed the emotion she must have felt.

"And then the King cursed God for the gift He gave him, and he brought his hand behind what used to be his daughter's back, and he touched his own cheek. And, to this day, there they still stand in their embrace, father and daughter, forever. Dead. The end."

She was silent as I continued to cry not so silent tears. I definitely remember the story didn't end like that, so upsettingly cruel and sad.

But then I felt myself growing calm, strangely calm.

"What's that?" I asked dreamily.

"What's what?" Rosalie purred back.

_That's_ what it was. She was purring. Not purring, because I couldn't hear it or even feel it, but she was, like, I don't know, purring, and I felt it calming me, putting me to sleep.

But I struggled against it. I had to know.

"Was King Midas your father?" I asked, fighting for coherency.

"No," responded Rosalie. Then her answer surprised me: "I am the King Midas in that story." She explained: "Didn't you discern the moral? Everything I touched died."

I thought about it … fuzzily.

"Does it hurt to be around me?" I wondered this from my last dream. If it hurt me for her to take my blood, did it hurt her not to?

Her purring got stronger, and I got sleepier. "That is not your concern," she answered.

_It hurt her._

"Does it hurt a lot?" I asked.

Rosalie didn't answer.

_It hurt her a lot._

"If you were King Midas, then who was the daughter?"

Rosalie didn't respond.

It couldn't have been me. I remembered what I looked like in the mirror: sallow, not fair … and definitely not beautiful.

"In the story, was I the daugh-…" I began to ask.

"Sleep now," Rosalie purred.

And I did.

* * *

**A/N:** King Solomon asked God for wisdom, not wealth [cf. 1 Kings 3:5-15].


	38. This Will Hurt — III: Killing Rosalie

**Chapter Summary: **Dead. She called me dead ... _spitefully_. She's right. She's always right, even when she's so very wrong. Well, I had wanted this. I had wanted her to see the monster I am. And now, she does. I _had_ wanted this.

* * *

I awoke to the morning light, my sweater in my arms, my face feeling freshly washed.

I looked up. Rosalie was there, sitting as before, the chair back between us. Her golden eyes watching me, her chest unmoving.

Wouldn't it get boring, just sitting there, watching somebody sleep?

"Good morning," I said cautiously, wondering what today would bring.

I didn't have to wonder long. She silently pointed toward the center of the cabin. I looked, seeing the still covered side of the triptych — _thank God!_ — with the tub, toiletries, towels and two new pitchers, steam rising from them.

She had been out. She had been out and had left me the sweater. And it looked like she knew just when I'd be waking up. She had to know the future, right? That is, she had to know the future to be able to know just when I'd be waking up.

Was there anything she couldn't do, the sad-storytelling, the purring-to-sleep, mind-reading, soul-sucking, fortune-telling vampire?

Or was I over-analyzing this?

She helped me uncover myself, which annoyed me some — didn't she think I could handle that? — but which actually helped me more than it annoyed me, as the blankets wrapped me tightly, as usual, and then she retreated to the table, still not breathing.

I guess it would a bath every day now. Something to get used to with Miss Cleanliness-Godliness, I guess.

I took the sweater with me and placed it near the tub, in sight, as I first bathed myself and then washed my hair. The heat of the water for the bath today was a very welcome foil to yesterday's agonizingly cold water memory.

I wondered how Rosalie knew that my shampoo back home had the scent of strawberries like this one. Could she fortune-tell backwards in time, too?

When I finished rinsing my hair, I looked up to check on the sweater. It was still there, but next to it were a pair of blue jeans, panties, socks, a tee and a lightweight collared sweater.

_Wow, clothes!_ I wondered what I had done for the special honor.

I didn't see a brassiere. I actually hadn't seen any at all in my inventory before my ill-fated trip to the outhouse, and I didn't see the outline of one against Rosalie's shirt when she slipped out of her sweater and my hands two nights ago. Was it two nights ago?

I guess Rosalie didn't need the support, although with her figure, I guess if she were human she certainly would. I wonder what Rosalie thought about this for me.

No, I actually didn't wonder … I knew. But I don't want to dwell on what she knew about my figure.

My lack of figure, that is.

Not dwelling on it.

I toweled off and got dressed. As I was pulling the collared sweater over my head I heard the sound of tearing. I put my hand on _my_ sweater quickly, just as soon as the collared sweater was over my head. _My_ sweater was still there. I picked it up, cradling it, and peeked around the edge of the triptych.

Rosalie was sitting by the stove, feeding it rags of what used to be my pillowcase. My PJ top lay underneath the remainder of those rags.

I walked over toward the stove, "You know, I really could wash …" and stopped. Rosalie was staring at me with black, black eyes.

I tried a different approach. It just seemed so wasteful destroying things like that.

"Are you ever going to stop ripping things up?"

She looked at me. "Yes."

That was helpful. I raised my eyebrow.

"I suppose I'll stop when you stop emitting all over these things," she explained coolly.

"Emitting?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "Tears, for one."

Well, I guess she'd be ripping things up for a while then, but this last one was her fault. Telling me that sad, sad story like that. _She wanted me to cry!_

Wait a minute. "For one?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered, and glanced ever-so-quickly downward.

Oh, my God.

Now she had to take back the thing about me being smart, because I felt just so stupid and so embarrassed. Now I knew why she didn't say 'crying' instead of saying 'emitting tears,' because tears weren't the only thing that I had emitted and had soiled my clothes and bed linen.

I swallowed. _Great!_ I was just on-the-ball this morning, wasn't I?

I blushed hard, trying to recover from this blunder. _New topic. New topic, now._ I looked over at the piles of clothes, thinking about the clothes I was wearing.

"You will be getting me over-clothes, right? A coat, boots, mitt-…"

"I remember the list," she stated coldly. "You don't need to reiterate it."

"Hat," I added, more than just a little ticked off at being interrupted.

She didn't look too happy either. _Well, tough for her._

"So, you were going to be doing that soon, right?" I pressed her, as calmly as I could. "Like before I have to go off on my own again and …"

"Oh, no!" she interrupted me again, God damn it. "Because I just _love_ finding you in the middle of nowhere more than _a mile_ from the outhouse, _in socks,_ nearly dead. But what really pleases me above all other things is to hold your limp form by the fire as you scream without cessation during your recovery. That is just simply _a delight!"_

Her sarcasm stunned me with its venom. It didn't stun me enough: I saw red. "Oh, really?" I shouted. "You get a real kick out of that, do ya? You really enjoy that, huh?"

_"Oh! I'm just having the time of my life doing that!"_ she shouted right back.

My hands balled into fists and dropped to my side. I felt the sweater, _my_ sweater, _not hers, _drop to the floor.

_"HA!"_ I screamed. _"HOW CAN YOU DO THAT! 'CAUSE YOU'RE NOT ALIVE! YOU'RE DEAD!"_

I was panting in fury, my eyes squeezed tightly shut. _C'mon, Rosalie, answer that, huh! Give it your best shot! You're not gonna walk all over me!_

Silence.

_Huh? _What was wrong? I opened my eyes.

Rosalie was gone. Her body was there, but it sat there, frozen. Her unblinking coal black eyes emptied of all reason. It was if she _were_ King Midas and had touched herself, turning herself into a diamond statue, sparkling in the sunlight filtered through the window.

I looked at her, but she didn't move.

"Rosalie?" I asked quietly.

I took a step toward her. I waved my hand in front of her eyes.

Nothing.

Oh, my God.

I had just killed her. She said I could've killed her before in the outhouse when I had called her kind, but she didn't say how. I had just found out how.

"Rosalie?" I asked desperately.

I staggered back a step, looking at the statue that used to be her.

_"Rosalie, please!"_ I begged.

Nothing.

I sat down on the floor, hard, and started crying. I reached for _her_ sweater and buried my face in it. It was washed clean, it smelled cleanly washed, soapy. But there was a hint, just a hint, of honeysuckle. I couldn't smell the Rose at all; it was gone. Because _she_ was gone.

_Because I had just killed her._

I was crying into the sweater, but then I heard something. I looked up to see Rosalie, still lifeless, still nothing in her eyes, but her hand was on her cheek, feeling it.

I couldn't breathe. I wanted to be sure of what I was seeing, but I didn't want to do or to say anything, because I didn't want to scare her away from her, so I just watched the lifeless statue's hand stroke its cheek.

Then Rosalie blinked, and something returned to her eyes.

She looked at me for a second, puzzled. Then realization seemed to dawn, and _she_ seemed to come back. She swallowed and quickly turned toward the stove, away from me.

"So much to do," she whispered, sounding lost. Besides her quick movement turning away from me, she seemed to move lethargically. She picked up a rag, looking down at it, but put it back down on the pile and not into the stove.

Oh, God! I had really done it this time. I had really, really hurt her, … very badly.

"Rosa-…" I began my apology, but it never got off the ground.

She whipped around so quickly I could only see a sparkling column, a pillar of light, and when she stopped, she had her hand held out, facing me, stopping my words in my mouth.

The look on her face …

It wasn't Rosalie anymore. It definitely wasn't Rose, and it wasn't even cruel Rosalie. It was cold fury, just that, only that, and nothing else.

"Pardon me," it said politely in Rosalie's voice, "but I am _reminded_ that I need to get some articles of clothes for _someone_. Would _you_ be needing to go to the outhouse? I'll be gone for a few hours."

"Rosa-…" I tried again.

In vain.

_"Yes or no?" _the cold fury asked very tightly through clenched teeth.

It was my turn to swallow. All I could do was to nod my head in a helpless _yes._

We were out the door before my head stopped moving. It usually took about fifteen seconds to get to the outhouse, but this time it either took fifteen hours or negative fifteen seconds, I don't know which one. She deposited me in the cold, dark outhouse and was gone.

I wondered idly if she would be leaving me here for a few hours.

She was back with the pail of embers. The outhouse was lit and steaming before I had my pants down. Rosalie was there, but she was gone.

I sat down and looked at her, that is, I looked at cold fury.

"Rosalie," I was shocked that she didn't stop me.

"I'm … I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She looked down at me.

"Are you finished?" Cold. Impersonal. Nothing.

I shook my head. I hadn't even started yet. I did that. Started, that is, and then finished.

She washed me. The robot washed me, and handed me a towelette.

I dried and put on my panties and jeans.

"For what?" she asked. She asked like she didn't care, like it was a matter of form.

I looked at her, helplessly, unable to say anything.

"Are you sorry for what you _said,_ or are you sorry for _what_ _it did to me?"_ she clarified.

_What it did to her,_ she said. I had really hurt her, so badly that she told me.

Rosalie told me this, when she hardly ever told me anything. She told me this: I had hurt her.

I had to think now, clearly. She was testing me, she was letting me pick, and if I picked wrong …

I thought carefully, as carefully as I could. I _was very sorry_ for what it did to her, but if I were Rosalie, she wouldn't care about that, right? She would care about what it meant, she would care about what I meant, about what I said. And I was very sorry for that, especially.

I took a deep breath and said cautiously, "For what I said, because …"

"The truth hurts, doesn't it?" she asked. I didn't know what she was saying; I didn't know where she was going with this. I wish I was smart, like she had claimed before, so I could know.

"What you said hurt me," _Oh, God! I was right!_ "very much, because it was the truth. So, how can you be sorry for what you said when what you said is the truth?"

She looked at me expectantly for half-a-second. She knew I couldn't answer, because she just said I couldn't. I couldn't argue with 'the truth.' I felt trapped, not knowing what to say.

"I'm sorry for both, Rosalie," I blurted out, "I'm sorry for both! I'm sorry I hurted you," I was stumbling over words — _'Hurted'?_ _Really smooth, cowgirl! _— "and I'm sorry what I said was wrong, because …"

Rosalie just shook her head. The candle was out, lime in the can in the can, and we were flying through the forest, and I was sitting at the table before I even saw the cabin approach. A bowl of steaming oatmeal appeared before me, a can of evaporated milk clanged down beyond it, a steaming cup of tea next to it, a jar of honey right next to it.

_"EAT YOUR BREAKFAST!"_ the cold fury screamed as she blew through the door. She was gone.

I sat there dazed, then the tears came, and they did not stop. The gasping turned to sobs, not helping at all. Not at all.

She had said, _'This will hurt,'_ yesterday morning. But she didn't say how it would hurt, and she didn't say who. I realized what my tears were. I had hurt her. I had hurt her so badly that I was crying her tears.

* * *

**Chapter Postlude**

My tears must have turned her around. I still had her sweater in my hands, and now I was crying into it without holding back. I heard her panting, barely containing her fury. I looked up to see her standing across the table from me, staring right at me.

She had come back. She had come back fighting mad.

"Don't you just love the irony of it?" she asked furiously. I stared at her mutely.

"Why is it that you get to hurt me, that you get to wound me to the core, and then _you_ get to cry about it? Did you know I can't cry?" She wiped her hands across her opened eyes. She didn't even blink in reaction to her "skin" touching her "eyes."

I didn't know that, I just saw that she was too _something, _too tough or too mad or too proud or, I don't know, too _something_ to cry.

"I didn't cry but twice in my human life, and now I cannot. I cannot for a year now. I didn't even miss it anymore. _But then you!" _She wasn't cold anymore, she was hot in her anger, shouting at me,_ "You hurt me and then you_ …" But then she stopped suddenly.

"But look at me," she said. I was looking at her; I couldn't look anywhere else as the tears snuck their way out of my eyes onto my cheeks. _"Look at me,"_ she repeated quietly to herself in disbelief, averting her eyes. "What would Miss Garrity say to me if she saw me now?"

It had to be a rhetorical question. I didn't know who she was talking about.

"I know exactly what she would say. She would say this." Rosalie answered her own question quietly. She raised her chin so that it was pointing at the ceiling and she looked down her nose at me.

_"Miss Hale,"_ her voice changed completely, taking on a British accent, and she didn't sound like her at all, she sounded like somebody else, somebody older, her voice deeper. _"I cannot know how I have so utterly failed you! For certainly a lady such as yourself would __**nevah**__ descend to such barbarism! It must be a failure on my part, so please do tell me how I may correct the error of my ways and instruct you bettah?"_

Her chin dropped to its normal head held high position, and she looked at me with rueful eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said, and her words hit me with their sincerity, "I'm sorry for my unladylike behavior."

"Rosalie, _you _don't need to …" I started, but stopped when she held up her hand.

"I'm interrupting you, but, yes, I do need to apologize for my behavior." Well, at least she was being _nice_ about interrupting me now.

"And you need to eat your breakfast. You've lost eleven percent of your body weight. Any more and you will kill yourself before I can." She shook her head.

"So, cry," she said quietly. "Cry for me, too, but don't cry too long, hm? Then," here she paused.

"Then, do chapter one of Algebra I — I'll check your work on the exercises when I return — and …" she walked over to the triptych, "mirror time." She unwrapped the mirrors, facing toward the stove, angled away from me, with one swift movement.

I swallowed, but before I could protest, she added: "Three seconds. Just three seconds this time. You've already done that; you can do that. You can do that again."

I started to shake my head, but she shook hers.

"No," she said, "you can do that. Now finish your cry, wash your face, then eat _all _of your breakfast, and do your chores. So much to do, and we have so little time."

She stated the last sentence so simply, as if she were just saying it, and if I had known her for less time than the forever that we've been together I would have just let it pass. Was it really only a week or so?

But I heard it. There was an edge of quiet determination to what she said, almost desperation. It was like she was on a mission. It was like she had to tell me some important things for me — or for her — before I died, that is, before she killed me. It was if somehow this was the most important thing for her in the world.

She gave me a what appeared to be a causal glance, picked up the tub full of water, and was gone.


	39. Just Say It

**Chapter Summary:** Flowers. Blueberries. Well, not blueberries, but both for me. Well, not for me. Dammit! I'm going to tell her. I _have _to tell her. Right now. I don't care what she thinks: I have to tell her I love her.

* * *

Rosalie returned before lunch time, which was a good thing, because I wasn't really hungry yet (although oatmeal really wasn't all that filling), but I also wasn't relishing the idea of making my own expedition, again, to that elusive outhouse.

I was sitting at the table, the algebra book propped open, and my note book partially covering that tome as I worked on the problems.

As soon as she walked in the door, she didn't greet me. Instead, she walked quickly to the table, put something there, at the center of it, right in front of me, grabbed something from the sink behind me, and was back out the door.

It was a bouquet of flowers: purple ones and red ones.

They looked wild. Flowers, in February, right in front of me.

_Rosalie had gotten me flowers?_

I didn't have time to puzzle over this, because she was now back in, holding one of the bowls. I guess that's what she got from the sink. She put it beside me. It was nearly full of blueberries.

She grabbed my cup, and was back out the door, tossing over a musical command of "Don't eat them yet" over her shoulder as she left.

They looked wild. But blueberries in February? Didn't they come into season later in the year?

_Rosalie had gotten me a bowl of blueberries?_

I suppose I should get used to my head spinning whenever Rosalie made herself known. No matter how much I thought about her while she was away, it seemed like her presence never ceased to amaze me.

And speaking of presence ...

Rosalie came back in with the cup, scooped out some water from the pot, and then, after a second, poured it into the bowl of berries. She set the cup down by me — it was about half-full now — and headed to the door, saying, "Let them soak."

"Rosalie, ..." I called out, trying to catch her.

But she was already gone, with a lingering "Be back shortly" her only remnant.

I sighed, looking down at the entirely uninteresting set of problems, and set back to work.

She did return a few minutes later, carrying outdoorsy clothes. Two large bags dangled beneath the pile she carried in her hands. She put everything down in the clothing corner, then came to me, standing over my shoulder, looking down at my work.

I had the urge to hide my notebook when she uttered a noncommittal hum. She pulled up a chair on the other end of the table and sat down, facing me.

"So, ..." she began.

But I interrupted her. "You brought me flowers?" I asked in disbelief.

She gave me the oddest look.

"I felt this place," here she waved airily, "could use a bit of color, and I happened to notice these, so ..." she paused thoughtfully, "I brought them here. Don't they make the table look more, ..." she shrugged, "spritely?"

"So," I looked at her, "you brought the flowers to make the cabin look nicer? You didn't bring them ..." _for me._ I couldn't finish the statement. I was embarrassed to think that I had thought she was doing something nice for me, and I didn't want to hear her have to tell me that they weren't for me.

"Yes, I brought them for the cabin," she confirmed, looking me dead in the eye. Her eyes piercing mine, not wavering a bit.

I dropped my gaze. _Of course,_ she wouldn't be bringing them for me.

"But," I heard her say, "at least the meaning of the rhododendron blossom are _à propos_, even if the irises are merely decorative_."_

"Huh?" I asked, befuddled.

Rosalie didn't respond, so I looked up from my notebook that I was nervously doodling in and into her gaze.

"Do you mean to ask," she asked quietly, "for clarification? for an explanation?"

I quickly dropped my eyes back to my notebook, and started rapidly scribbling in my scrawl as I nodded my response to her. I wrote: _Rule number 1: don't say 'um' or 'huh' to vampires._

"Is the notebook talking to you? Or am I?" Rosalie demanded.

Boy, I was just hitting home runs today.

"You are, Rosalie," I whispered.

But I couldn't look at her. I was just so embarrassed now, so I wrote in the notebook instead: _Rule number 2: look at vampires when they're lecturing you._

She waited patiently as I wrote, but when my pencil stopped, her calm voice cut right into me.

"Then may I have the _pleasure_ of your eyes and your attention when I'm speaking to you?"

I knew I was getting myself into more trouble, so I sighed, put down my pencil, screwed up my courage and looked at her: Her Majesty, Queen Rosalie.

She surely looked the part: annoyed with me, but bored at the same time, as if I wasn't worth the energy of getting angry over.

"Thank you," she said dismissively, but then, in a more kindly tone, she asked: "Now, what did you need me to explain about what I said?"

Well, I did ask before, so I guess I asked for the lecture before she'd answer? So, this was all my fault? As usual.

I kept my voice calm when I responded with the question the way she wanted me to ask it: "Why are rhododendron flowers, um," and here I grimaced at her grimace, _"sorry!" Jeez!_ "Why are rhododendron flowers appropriate?"

She smiled. "Better," she said and then answered: "Rhododendron means _'beware!'_ So, not only do they brighten up the room, but they also serve to remind you of what I am. Beautiful _and_ useful, don't you agree?" She seemed so pleased.

"Oh," I responded. I just liked that they were pretty ... I really didn't need to know the warning part. "... and the blueberries? I thought they weren't in season."

I was just talking and talking, wasn't I? Dancing around what I really needed to say. Dancing around what I had determined to say when I stood in front of those mirrors.

"They aren't actually blueberries," she responded. "I don't know actually know what they are, but they aren't noxious for your physiology. They are bit past their prime, so that's why they are soaking in water. Try them."

I looked at the bowl of berries, and carefully picked out one, putting it into my mouth.

"Be careful," she said as she stood up, "they have a pit."

She got the other bowl from the sink and put it by the bowl of berries as I tentatively pealed the fruit from the pit with my teeth. The berry felt sandy in consistency in my mouth, and there was no taste to it at first. I thought she was punishing me for my comment to her earlier by the stove, and I felt ... grateful ... that she was finally taking out her anger on me, because the guilt? It was so heavy, that I was practically ready to beg her to shout at me or something. She wouldn't even let me apologize for what I said, and it was eating me up inside.

But then, in my mouth, the berry went from sandy and tasteless to still sandy but bursting with a very subtle fruity flavor ... like blueberry, I guess, but having its own taste. It was really hard for me to describe, because the taste was just a whisper of sweetness, not at all juicy, but fruity all the same.

"So, did you do your mirror time?" Rosalie asked.

I crunched down on the pit, hard, in my surprise, nearly swallowing it in shock. I spent the next second spitting out the pit into the empty bowl, coughing, tears right on the edge of my eyes cause by a little bit of saliva going down the wrong hole.

"I _tried,_ Rosalie, _I tried!"_ I shouted back quickly in my defense.

Her Majesty did not look amused.

"You 'tried'?" she asked haughtily.

"Yes!" I responded, blushing hard and looking down at the notebook.

Rosalie cleared her throat.

I forced my eyes up, looking into her critical onyx eyes.

Her eyebrow was raised. "What does that mean, you 'tried'? You either did your three seconds, or you didn't. Which one was it?"

"I..." I started breathing heavily. I couldn't look at her anymore, so I looked down at the notebook again as I finished my weak response, "... tried."

Rosalie sighed.

"Li-..." she started, but then quickly whispered a _"dammit!"_ almost too soft for me to hear. Her mistake brought my eyes up right quick, but I saw she was the one looking away, now, grimacing.

She looked back, displeased. I don't know if she was displeased with me or with her or with both.

_"Girl,"_ she began again, "did you stand in front of the mirrors at all?"

I nodded.

_"Good!"_ she smiled lightly. Her praise was a surprise to me, even if it was faint praise. "That's a good start. Now, did you stand in front of the mirrors for three seconds?"

"Um," I began, but her narrowed eyes silenced me for a second as I looked away quickly, remember how angry my hesitancy made her.

But then I looked right back and shouted angrily at her. "Look, okay? I can't be Little Miss Perfect like you are just like that, all right? _I'm trying, okay? Jeez! Can't you see that I'm trying?"_

I crossed my arms petulantly and, I cannot believe this, but my lower lip stuck out as I looked away again.

God damn tears! Sneaking out of my eyes like that when I'm trying to be angry. When I _am_ angry. I'm not a Little Miss Nothing Cry Baby. I went to wipe away those traitorous tears only to have my arm hit something cold and hard.

Rosalie was standing right in front of me ... holding out a hanky.

I took it and looked down at it. It was white, diaphanous, and had a very pretty flower pattern, a light purple and a dark orange-red, much like the flower garland that now graced the table. It was beautiful, ... just like her, just like everything about her.

I murmured a quiet _thanks_ and wiped my eyes and blew my nose. The smell of it was her: so compelling. Rosalie's voice drifted softly from where she was sitting before. I didn't hear her come to me; I didn't hear her go back to her chair. I just had her beautiful, and now wet, hanky in my hands. I just heard her voice from across the table.

"I _do_ see you trying, and you _are_ doing so, so well in such a very short time."

I looked at her blurrily through red eyes: "Really?" I asked hopefully.

"Yes, really, so know that, and don't despair." She was looking at me so intensely.

"Hokay," I breathed out. It was all I could say.

"Okay," she responded quietly.

A second passes where nothing was said, but where I felt she was saying everything to me. And I wish I understood what she meant, but I didn't understand one word of her silence.

"So," she continued lightly, as if this moment didn't exist.

"So?" I asked, still stupid with my anger and confusion.

She waved toward the mirrors.

"Oh," I said meekly.

"Look, Rosalie, okay? I don't know how long I stood in front of the mirrors, okay?" My words started getting faster and faster. "But it was probably three seconds, no, it was probably more than three seconds, like, a lot more, but I probably didn't do it right, because I was thinking about a lot, okay, and I don't think I really, um, _looked_ at the mirrors all that long or all that much or all that often or ... okay, look, okay? Look. I just can't do it, okay? What do you wan-..."

I was stopped suddenly, because Rosalie stood up suddenly.

"What I _want_ you to say," she began very quietly and very forcefully, "is _not that."_

She held out her hand toward me. I looked at it.

"Well, come on," she commanded.

"Where?" I asked weakly.

She came around the table, and I pressed myself back as far as I could into the chair.

_"We_ are going to go to the mirrors, and _we_ are going to do this, now ..."

"No." I said firmly.

Rosalie blinked. "'No'?" she asked in confusion.

"Look, Rosalie," I responded quickly, "I already said I can't do it. That's it."

She raised her offered hand to her chin, tapping a finger on her perfect marble cheek.

"You _can't_ do it, or you _won't_ do it?" she asked quietly, but I could hear the rage boiling underneath.

"Look, Rosalie, I'm not ..." I didn't get to finish what I wasn't because Rosalie reached into the bag of books right beside her and pulled out the Austen compilation. She rested it on the table.

I swallowed and whispered, "That's not my book anyway; it's yours."

She raised an imperious eyebrow. "So you won't miss it if it's gone, then?" She took it to the stove and opened the vent and the front door.

I could barely breath. "You wouldn't."

Her stony face said otherwise: "Mirror," she commanded coldly.

I started to panic. "There are other books out there in the world, there are ..."

She cut me off with her sardonic reply, "... and will you _ever_ get to see any of them?"

"Rosalie, _please,"_ I pleaded, "I just can't do this. I just can't!"

She grimaced again, but then got a thoughtful look.

"How about this," she offered, "I will _help_ you, and ... _and_ ... for each day you do this, you get to read a chapter from any of the books in this volume before bed time. How about that?"

"'Each day'?" I asked in disbelief.

She rolled her eyes. "You are going to do this with or without the book, so, if you go willingly, ..." she waved the thick gray book suggestively.

I looked at the book, then I looked back to her.

"You'll help me?" I asked in a small voice.

"Yes," she responded with conviction, her hard face backing her firm affirmation.

"... And can we do this after an outhouse break?" I asked hopefully.

"No," she responded with as much conviction.

"Please?" I begged, trying to forestall the upcoming torture.

She steady gaze was pitiless.

I sighed, caving in. I murmured an "okay" as I dropped my eyes to my lap. I just knew this wasn't going to end well. Seven seconds that last time during the night was hours and hours, I could just feel doom creeping toward me.

Speaking of doom, I heard the stove door close and the vent dampen. Rosalie was right in front of me again, and I heard a quiet _thump_ from the bag. She held out her empty hand to me. I took it, watching only it, not where it was taking me.

"All right, now," she said quietly, "all you need to do is to look into your eyes in the mirror for three seconds. Let's begin."

Okay. It's simple, right? All I have to do is look up, and ...

I looked away as soon as I saw what was looking back at me.

Well, at least this time the thing in the mirror had washed itself.

"Look at me," came the quiet command.

I couldn't. _"Why?"_ I asked helplessly.

"Did you know," Rosalie asked quietly, "that the eyes are the windows to the soul? I didn't." Her voice was calm and soothing and gentle. "I mean, I had heard that, but I didn't believe it one bit. Of course, I never looked into anybody's eyes, or if I did, it was just a dismissive glance. Maybe it was because that nobody that I had known had a soul that I wanted to see."

"I want to see your beautiful soul, that's why I want you to look at me," she concluded quietly.

I just shook my head and blushed. Now I was embarrassed, too.

She lifted my chin with a cold, patient, irresistible hand. I couldn't but help but look into her eyes that had no end to the depths of them.

"Don't you wish to see the beautiful soul in you, too?" she demanded quietly.

She turned my face to the center mirror before I could answer.

I looked away right then. Because she was lying to me. I didn't have a beautiful soul. I didn't have anything. I was nothing next to her, and she knew it. She was being nice today for some inexplicable reason, but that didn't change facts.

Rosalie sighed.

"So," she began briskly, not moving an inch, "what was it that you were thinking about in front of the mirrors earlier?"

It sounded like she was trying to distract me into looking at the mirrors, but the distraction was worse.

For what I was thinking about was this.

I'm going to tell her.

I'm going to tell her today. I'm going to tell her that I love her. I don't care what she thinks. I'm just going to come out and say it. She knows already, because she's read my mind, and because she heard my voice, too. That's why she came back. So this time I'm going to tell her right to her face. I'm sick to death of dancing around this, so I'm just going to say it, right now.

I clenched my fists at my sides and looked her dead in the eye. I'm going to tell her right now.

"Rosalie, I have to...ooooohhhaaa..." The air escaped my lungs in a whoosh, and I couldn't get any air back in to finish the sentence.

Rosalie's whole demeanor changed from confidence to caution as she crossed her arms in front of her. She looked scared and deadly at the same time.

I concentrated really hard on filling my lungs, but I had to check first.

"Rosalie, I have to _ask_ you something."

_Tell her!_ the voice commanded. I ignored it.

"What is it?" she demanded coldly and cautiously.

"Rosalie, ... why did you come back?"

She looked at me quizzically.

"You know, that night?" I waved at the mirrors. "When I said ... when I said..."

"When you said you hate me," she finished for me, her voice dispassionate.

"Yes, when I said ... that." I finished lamely.

"Why do you ask? You are my responsibility." She said that as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

"But ... but ... I said ... I ..." I was stuttering with emotion.

"It doesn't matter what you say or what you feel. You are my responsibility; I am a Hale. I take care of what is mine." She said this so seriously.

"Besides," she continued lightly, smiling, "it makes perfect sense for you to hate me. I was actually a bit relieved to hear you come to your senses. I am your kidnapper, after all; I am your destruction. It makes perfect sense for you to hate me."

"But, you came back, Rosalie, because you _heard_ me, you _heard _me say it. You _heard_ me, and you came back!"

She looked at me. "Heard you? Of course I heard you, you couldn't have been more forceful with your outpouring of hate, but when I came back you were asleep. You were quite cold, too. You weren't saying anything then, even though you do talk in your sleep at times."

"No!" I shouted, "You know what I mean! You _heard _me say it!"

She looked at me. She was going to make me spell it out.

"You read my mind, Rosalie. You _heard_ me."

She smiled indulgently at me. "I don't read minds, L-...girl."

_Liar!_ I shouted in my mind, and she gave me a cross look, so I _knew_ she was lying. I was just going to have to say it.

"At any rate," Rosalie continued, interjecting her speech before I could open my mouth, "you'd have to be _insane_ not to hate me, so I entirely understand the depth of your feelings. You needn't apologize on that count. Was that what you were going to say? It's quite all right: I understand your hatred. If you had any other feeling, that would be a very serious concern."

"Rosalie, I was going to say that ..."

Then I stopped.

The impact of her words hit me.

She said I would be insane if I said I loved her.

"Aaaah can't breeeaatheeee." I couldn't get air in anymore as the panic of the dawning comprehension hit me. I was waving my hands up and down in front of me in helpless furtive gestures, trying to move the air on the inside with my hands on the outside.

She looked at me with shocked concern. "What do you mean you can't breathe? You are hyperventilating. _ Calm down, girl. Cal-..."_

I didn't hear her finish. I grabbed her arm as darkness covered my eyes.

_Chicken! _the voice in my mind kicked me as I fell into unconsciousness, adding insult to injury.


	40. Rule Number One

**Chapter Summary:** Why is it that every trip to the bathroom has to be this, like, life-or-death, world-altering ... thingie? _And_ I have to behave like a lady while this is all happening? So much for Rosalie's suggestion of a relaxing walk!

* * *

I woke utterly confused. It was bright outside, which meant it was bright inside, and I was fully dressed in day-time clothes. I looked up from the bed, disoriented, to see Rosalie sitting in the chair, the high-back between us, looking at me with concern.

Did I have to wake up this way for the rest of my life?

Well, maybe not. Maybe Rosalie would kill me in my sleep. _Great, just great!_ There was no bad situation that existed that my thoughts couldn't make worse.

But Rosalie wasn't worse. She said she was, but she wasn't. In fact, her face was glowing, reflecting the brightness. There she sat: a concerned vampire angel, sitting over me.

I tried to recollect what happened. I couldn't.

"What happened?" I asked.

Rosalie looked somewhat relieved, but she answered cautiously, "Actually, I was hoping you would tell me," she said. "Do you remember anything?"

I blinked at her.

"You were going to tell me something ...?" she prompted.

"Um," I said, trying to remember, "I was going to tell you ..."

Then I stopped. My throat constricted with fear. _Oh,_ now I remember what I was going to tell her. I was going to tell her I love her, but that wasn't such a good idea now. Not at all.

Besides the fact that that she said somebody (that would be me) would be insane to love her, she had called me something. Well, she had _almost_ called me something.

She had called me "Li-..."-something.

I had a sudden realization. "Li-..."-something was not the "L-word." "Li-..."-something was not "Love," because "Love" was "Lo-..."-something, not "Li-..."-something.

I didn't know what "Li-..."-something was, but I did know this: she wasn't calling me "Love." I had guessed wrong about that. What else had I guessed wrong about? I didn't know, but I did know that now was not the time to be saying things when I didn't know where I stood any more.

"Yes ...?" she looked at me quizzically.

_Oh, yes, _I realized I had stopped mid-confession, but I didn't know how to start again, and I didn't know, when I started again, what I could possibly say.

Rosalie frowned. "Okay, now, don't panic," she said.

_Too late for that. _ I felt myself beginning to hyperventilate again.

She moved a cold, smooth hand to my forehead, and I instantly felt better, ... calmer, even. She wasn't doing anything, but looking at me intensely and just resting her hand on my head, but it felt as though her touch somehow, ... I don't know. It felt like somehow her just touching me made me feel reassured.

I looked up to her, still very unsettled, but not falling off the edge of reason, like I had just felt myself doing a second ago ... again.

"I have an idea," she said slowly, almost hesitantly. "You need to go, right?"

I nodded, realizing I did need to go, but I didn't know where this conversation was going.

"Why don't we just ..." she began and then paused, looking away, then she looked back at me. "Why don't we just not worry about anything for a little while, hm? We can try walking to the outhouse and see how far you get. How does that sound?"

I looked at her. The way she was asking me, it almost seemed as if she were shy about something. But what could she be shy about?

But she had just said not to worry about anything. Maybe I should try doing that for just a little bit, instead of asking more questions that might get me into more trouble. Maybe I should listen to this glowing guardian angel for now.

I looked up at her. "I think that sounds like a really good idea," I answered.

She smiled. "Good," she said, "let's get you dressed." She rose from the chair and went to the pile of the clothes in the far corner of the cabin.

I sat up, cautiously, on the bed. That seemed to work fine. I watched Rosalie pull the ensemble of outdoor wear from the clothes pile I had asked for: a thick wool jacket, a scarf, a knit cap, mittens and boots. She placed everything but the boots on the table and nodded to me.

I rose from the bed. That worked, too. Pleased, I walked over to the table, sneaking a peek at the mirrors as I passed them. They were still there, and that plain nothing of a girl still looked back at me. I continued quickly to the table, pulling out a chair and sat down and started pulling on the boots.

I was getting excited: a new adventure to the crapper, but this time I'd be chaperoned, so I couldn't get into too much trouble, could I? Now that I had a vampire watching me, the likelihood of me getting killed went way down.

Um, wait ... a vampire watching me _increased_ my chances of survival?

Well, anyway.

Rosalie handed the scarf for me to put on then helped me into the tweed long coat. She then put the cap on my head, covering my ears, and handed me the mittens.

I started to get very warm, and I felt a trickle of sweat sneak out of my armpit.

"Okay," said Rosalie, putting on her trench coat, "let's get going." She opened the front door, and beckoned me out ahead of her. I exited the cabin, and heard the snow crunch beneath my boot.

It felt good. The cold of the outside matching the heat of bundled-up me, and I felt just right as I walked through the snow alongside Rosalie, walking so gracefully on top of the snow crust. I noticed that she was also now wearing gloves, had her collar turned up, and she was wearing a hat that had to be the very latest fashion: it was wide-brimmed, and the brim draped over her collar. Just the smallest part of her face was visible, and the front of the hat blocked the direct sunlight.

But it didn't block the sunlight reflected from the snow. There was still no mistaking her for just some person. Rosalie wasn't just some person.

"Is that why you wear the trench coat?" I asked. "So you don't look like ..."

She looked at me with eyes as black as coals, but they weren't angry at me.

"That's part of it ... a large part of it," she responded.

"Oh," I said. All that beauty, and she had to hide it. I felt kind of bad for her, and was going to say something about that, but then I felt she might not like that. It did sound pitying, and she said that's the worst thing you could do to her. I decided to change course.

"What's the other part?" I asked. It couldn't be that she was cold. She had said that the snow _warmed_ her.

She smiled at me. "Do you see that?" she asked.

I had no idea what she meant. "See what?" I asked.

Her smile widened. "I'm surprised you are missing it. Say something, and look with your eyes what happens when you speak."

"Oh!" I got it, because I now saw my breath making eddies of steam.

"Say something!" I demanded.

She paused for a second as we walked along, then asked: "Are you getting fatigued?"

Nothing. I heard her voice, but I didn't see anything.

"Wow!" I said, "Are you breathing, then?"

She looked at me. "Not really," she answered, with no visible sign in the air that she spoke, "air goes in and the same air goes out, unaltered, merely colder along with bit of my scent. But you didn't answer my question."

"Nah, I'm fine," I responded, smiling. It actually felt good, walking along out in the open like this after being cooped up in the cabin for so long.

"Did you mean to say, 'No'?" she asked chidingly.

Okay, it _mostly_ felt good. I grimaced.

"Sorry," I sighed, looking down at the snow in front of me.

"You will tell me when you feel the slightest discomfort, all right?" she continued. "I don't wish for you to push yourself this first time."

"Yes, Mother," I whispered petulantly, still looking down, still smarting from her scolding, no matter how lightly it was delivered.

After a couple of seconds, I realized I was walking alone. I stopped, and looking up noticed that Rosalie wasn't beside me anymore. I turned around, looking where I had come from. Rosalie was standing a few yards back, arms crossed, staring at me furiously.

_Uh, oh!_

I swallowed.

Rosalie stood there, staring at me, and I saw the anger building in her.

"Rosalie, I ..." I tried to defuse the situation before it got worse.

"_I,"_ Rosalie spat out the words slowly and distinctly, _"am not,"_ each word was a hammer blow, _"your mother!"_

"Rosalie," I answer quickly, holding up my hands placatingly, "I know. I know! I'm sorry, I was just, you know, I was just teasing, that's all."

This didn't seem to please her at all, however.

"You are _lucky_ I am not your mother!" she bit off, her musical voice ringing throughout the forest, even though she wasn't shouting.

But I was. "Well, at least you're not going to leave me!" I shouted back before I even knew what I was saying.

Silence, except for my panting; my breaths formed angry clouds around me. A tear snuck out of the corner of my eye. Rosalie regarded me with a look I couldn't understand, and then her anger seemed to disappear to be replaced by what looked like sadness.

"How do you know that?" she asked quietly.

I looked into those black, impenetrable eyes, then l dropped my gaze and felt my shoulders slump.

"I actually don't know that," I whispered to the snow. I peeked up to see Rosalie standing right beside me, her floral smell announced her presence, even though not one sound in the forest gave that hint. I straightened my shoulders and looked at her. "Will you?" I asked her.

She looked at me for a second, then looked away. "Outhouse is that way," she indicated with an open palm in a slightly different direction than where my wandering had led me. I looked in that direction, and we both continued that way in silence.

I felt her look at me a few times as we walked. The earlier sense of adventure was now overwhelmed in a sense of solitude. I was walking alongside somebody who kept herself distant from me, no matter how close, physically, she happened to be.

But I couldn't dwell on self-pity for too long. It felt good for a few minutes to wallow, but the walk helped move my mind as my body moved. I started thinking on other things.

Like what "Li-..."-something stood for. I started going over in my mind names that were "Li-..."-something. Maybe it was a nickname? Like "Lyn" for "Marilyn"? Or "Liz" for "Elizabeth"?

Or "Lizzy" ... that would be so cool! That means I could be the heroine of _Pride and Prejudice_.

No. That couldn't be it. Rosalie didn't seem the kind of person who would use nicknames. Babies recently had been named "Lila," maybe it was that? But what did 'Lila' mean? It meant 'Delilah,' right? From 'Samson and Delilah' ... she was the girl who was so beautiful it caused strong, powerful and invincible Samson of the long hair to fail and then he destroyed basically everything. I snuck a peek at Rosalie. _She_ was strong, powerful and invincible, or so it seemed. _She _had long hair. But me? Beautiful?

No, it couldn't be 'LiLa.'

Or ... "Li-..."-something. Hm.

"I wish I knew what you were thinking," I heard that beautiful voice say wistfully beside me.

"Why do you just read my mind and find out?" I snapped back petulantly.

Rosalie sighed.

I continued my interrupted thought: "Li-..."-something. Rosalie had been going by "Lillian." That was "Li-..."-something. But why would Rosalie call me by her own name? I wasn't anything like her. Not even close. Not in any way at all.

"You know," Rosalie said into my thoughts, "I told you I don't read minds, L-... mmmphf!"

I looked up quickly to see Rosalie grimacing, her jaw locked tightly. She stopped and fell through the snow crust with an audible crunch and clenched her fists. Her eyes narrowed at me as if this were my fault.

"I really, really wish you would earn your new name so I could address you properly!" she growled.

I looked at her, then shook my head. I was curious myself what she thought my new name was, but I didn't see the reason for these games. I took off my right mitten and offered my hand.

"It's _Bella Swan;_ pleased tameecha," I said casually, lightly emphasizing my name, ... my _real_ name.

She looked at my offered hand then looked intensely into my eyes.

I felt myself withering under her critical gaze.

"Well, that _is_ my name!" I protested weakly.

I don't know what happened next, all I know is that I was flying backward through the forest, captured in Rosalie's bear hug as she seemed to move faster than a bullet. We were inside the cabin, and she stripped off my over-clothes and threw them into a pile in the corner by the table. Hers joined right after.

And we were standing in front of the mirrors.

"Gah!" I cried out, looking away quickly; looking at Rosalie's intense stare.

"So your name's Bella Swan, is it?" she demanded fiercely.

"Yes, it is!" I responded just as fiercely. Well, almost as fiercely.

"Okay," she said, not one ounce of agreement in her voice. "You say that's your name? Claim it!"

"Fine!" I shouted back boldly, but I didn't feel all that bold. I knew we were in front of the mirror for some reason, and whatever the reason was, I knew I probably wasn't going to like it.

"Fine," she waved at the mirrors.

I swallowed. "What?" I demanded weakly, not looking at the mirrors.

"You say you're Bella Swan, well, claim it. Look right in the mirrors and say I am beautiful and I am graceful."

No problem. That would be easy.

I looked right in the mirrors and said it: "You are so beautiful, and you are so graceful," as I looked right into her eyes in the center mirror.

"Ha, ha, very funny," she said. It didn't sound like she thought it was funny.

Well, I didn't think it was funny, either.

"I'm not joking," I retorted to those onyx eyes in the mirror.

Those onyx eyes narrowed.

"Okay, fine. All right. I _am_ beautiful, and I _am_ graceful, ... _and_ I can say that to myself. Watch," she commanded.

She squared herself to the mirror, looking into her own eyes. "I am beautiful. I am graceful. I am Rosalie Lillian Hale." She straightened even more, crossed her arms, looking very proud and pleased with what she saw in the mirror as she examined herself for a second.

Then she turned to me. I looked at the real Rosalie, not the reflection, and swallowed again.

"Now your turn," she stated coldly. "Look yourself in the eye and say these words exactly, 'I am beautiful. I am graceful. I am Bella Swan.' You do that, and you've earned that name."

My throat went dry. I looked at her.

"I just do that, and I get my name back? That's all I need to do?" I asked for confirmation.

Rosalie raised her eyebrow and crossed her arms: "Any time now ..."

I sighed. I turned to my reflection, and looked at me.

"I am ..." I started.

I looked back at Rosalie. "What am I supposed to say?" I asked her.

Rosalie's face hardened.

I looked back at my image in the mirror.

I tried to say it, ... but I couldn't even start again.

I turned to Rosalie and looked at that beautiful, graceful Rosalie Lillian Hale.

That cold, angry, beautiful, graceful Rosalie Lillian Hale.

"And that," she hissed, "is why your name is _not_ 'Bella Swan,' because if you can't even say what your name means to yourself, then that name is not yours."

I found my coat being put on me and then myself flying through the forest. The next thing I knew, we were in the outhouse. It looked like Rosalie filled the pail with embers and brought that along, too.

How could she move that fast? It was beyond belief ... except for the fact that she kept doing it. She prepared the outhouse, steam rose from the water bucket and the lit candle illuminated the space.

"Coat," she said coolly, holding out her hand.

I guess she was allowing me to undress myself now, instead of just ripping off the clothes. How nice of her. I took off the coat and handed it to her. I unbuckled my belt and dropped trou. Rosalie looked away as I sat and did my business.

"Miss Nobody's done," I whispered to the beautiful, graceful goddess in front of me.

She turned her critical gaze to me. It was a thoughtful look on her face. I couldn't look into that look anymore. I dropped my eyes.

"Let me wash you," she said quietly.

And she did. She handed me a towelette, and I dried myself. When I stood, and pulled up and fixed my trou, she handed me the tin of lime. I poured it in, and handed her the can, and she gave me my coat. I put it on in silence.

She still had that thoughtful look on her face. "Are you up for walking back?" she asked.

"I guess so ..." I said filled with ineffable sadness.

Rosalie regarded me.

"What?" I asked, despondent.

"You 'guess so'?" she asked pitilessly. "Are you or aren't you?"

Now what I was up for was dying. I wish I could just die. Right now. I was tired of this. I was tired of having to be perfect when she obviously thought of me as a nobody and a nothing. It was just so hard living up to her impossible demands while fencing with her in these cruel mind games.

"Rosalie," I sighed, "yes. Yes, I'm up for walking back. Okay?"

I actually was. After being inactive for so long, I liked being able to walk again, even if the walk was with Miss Cruel Vampire.

She looked at me for a second, but this time I simply returned her look.

"Okay," she agreed, "just remember not to push yourself."

"Okay," I acquiesced dully, then reassured her with: "I'll tell you if I get tired."

"Good," she smiled. "Shall we go, then?"

She pulled out of her trench coat pockets my hat, scarf and mittens. I looked at her. She seemed be so demanding one second and then light and easy the next. I just didn't get it.

After I finished dressing myself, we set off in silence.

After a minute she said quietly. "You know you are, don't you?"

I trudged along through the snow that she seemed almost to float above.

"I'm what?" I guess I was supposed to ask this question.

"You are beautiful. You are graceful." Her quiet answer held not one note of sarcasm.

I just shook my head. "You know, Rosalie, I don't know what warped version of reality you are in, but calling me beautiful? Okay, so I'll let that one pass, because I don't know how to answer that, but graceful? That has no basis in anything at all. Are you blocking from your mind the tub incident, and the floor incident, and the stove incident ... twice?"

I wondered if maybe drinking animal blood was making her see things. Maybe I should offer some of my own so she could get back on an even keel. Might help her mood swings, too.

"No," she responded, interrupting my concerns, "I've watched you. You are not clumsy: you do stumble, but it's not because of clumsiness. You are moving your body gracefully to go from point to point. In fact, you have an unearthly grace. It's just that your mortal body has limitations. If you were a ..." but then she stopped.

Now I was curious. "If I were a what?"

Rosalie looked away and was silent.

"If I were a what?" I pressed.

Rosalie looked at me with irritation. "Never mind. Errant thought. This way." She pointed with her chin pretty much the way we were going, and walked determinedly in that direction.

Well, I had had just about enough of this emotional see-saw ride. I bent down, scooped up some snow, balled it and hurled it with all my might at Rosalie's backside.

Rosalie turned to watch the snowball drop maybe four feet from me, halfway between us. She raised her eyebrow at me, and a smile ghosted her lips.

I closed my eyes for a second and felt my jaw tightening. I opened my eyes and glared at her: "Well, _you_ try throwing a snowball with these mittens!"

She walked right up to me, holding out her hand.

_Oh, no!_

"No bets!" I shouted. "I'm not betting anything on this!"

"Mittens," she demanded coldly.

I blanched, but I handed her the mittens.

She put them on and scooped up a snowball.

"Uh, Rosalie, you're, well, standing closer to me than ..." I began.

"There are three trees behind me," she interrupted.

I looked, there were three trees in the distance, but she couldn't possibly mean those trees, because they were so far away from us. There were plenty of other closer trees that might be possible for her to hit.

"... Two forming a 'V' and the other one upright slightly to the right of the first two ..."

Yep. She meant those trees. They must have been about fifty feet away.

"Which tree do you wish for me to hit?" she looked at me, assuredness flowing out of her.

I sighed. "Okay, Rosalie, I believe you, okay?"

Rosalie's steady gaze didn't waver. She waited.

I shook my head in defeat. "The left one?" I asked, but as I asked, I saw Rosalie blur in place, and I didn't see it, but I heard it: the 'thump' of the snowball hitting the tree. I looked. There was a white dot on the tree about head height.

I looked back to her, she was standing there, facing me as before, so impassively.

"Um, I meant the right-most one?" I figured maybe if I looked really hard I could see her do it.

But she didn't move at first. She stood there and smiled at me ... the smile looked a little naughty. And then, where she was, there was just movement, she seemed to be spinning in place, drifting lazily along in a meandering path. Whiteness erupted from the cyclone, shooting out in an arc from her to the right-most tree. It formed a perfect stream, and it scrawled quickly up the side of the tree. When the haze of the snow cleared from the now still Rosalie I saw that the tree had a word inscribed on it in snow. In a perfect hand, the name "Rosalie" was written in a beautiful cursive script. I looked back to the named being, who was now utterly still, she looked at me, completely at ease, took off the mittens and extended them to me.

"You've been doing well with your speaking," she said, "but you have been slipping recently. You should remember to know what you are to say before you say it."

I looked at her, holding the mittens out to me. If I couldn't believe what I had seen before, then this display utterly amazed me.

I took the mittens with nerveless fingers. She started walking off again, but then turned back to me when she saw me not following.

"Well, come on, then," she said like a mother calling to a dawdling child. Like a mother that she so angrily said she wasn't to me.

She came back to me when I didn't move, looking at me quizzically.

"Iiiihhhhiiizzz there anything ..." I tried to breathe; it was hard. "Is there anything you can't do perfectly?" I asked her, and I heard the awe filling my voice. "Is there anything that's impossible for you, like everything is for me?"

She tilted her head that was the sun itself to one side, regarded me, and answered dispassionately: "There are many things that you do that I cannot."

I sputtered in shocked disbelief. "Yeah, right!" I gasped out. "Name one."

"I'll do better than that. I can name five right off the top of my head." She raised a hand and prepared to count with her fingers these five impossible things for her that I did so well. What? Did she think I was a great dancer? I couldn't wait to hear these nonexistent things. As if Rosalie couldn't do anything!

"Hope." She touched one finger.

"Cry. Sleep." She touched two more fingers, staring at me so hard, as the impact of the words hammered into me.

"Blush." She touched her pinky. And here I blushed, and two tears, unbidden, sprang out of my eyes. She was killing me as she rattled off her lost humanity.

Then she looked at me with an intensity that would melt through fifty feet of lead and touched her thumb.

"Live," she finished her impossible list, and she dropped her hand, looking at me.

Two more tears sped down my cheeks, and I gasped out an involuntary breath that was almost a sob. Except for sleeping, I was doing everything on her list that she couldn't. I was a standing reminder of everything she had lost. Of everything she would _never_ see again. And her name inscribed so beautifully on that tree? That so impressed me? I bet she would trade that and everything else just to be plain, little old, not beautiful, not graceful me.

I bet she would trade that in a heartbeat.

"Oh, my God, Rosalie!" I gasped out. "I am so, so sor-..."

Rosalie held up her hand, stopping me.

"Don't be," she demanded forcefully. "Don't be sorry for what you are, girl. Be that. Do those things that I cannot. And treasure them. I do. I've lost those things."

But then she paused and looked away.

"No," she said pensively. "No, I didn't lose those things. When I was alive, I wasn't. I didn't cry, I didn't blush, I didn't hope, I didn't anything. I was just that cold, beautiful thing in life that I am now. I cannot miss those things because I didn't use those gifts that I was given."

She turned back to me. "Treasure these impossible things while you can, girl, ... while you still live," she demanded, but her voice sounded almost pleading.

Then she reached out.

And her hand cupped my cheek.

And I felt the coldness of it, so much colder than the air around us, touching my tears there.

And she gasped, and pulled her hand back quickly, looking at it with a clenched jaw. I watched, transfixed, as she started to bring her hand to her mouth, her coal black eyes becoming blacker and blacker. But then she stopped, turned quickly from me, and wiped her hand in the snow briskly, almost with disgust, as if she were wiping my snot off her hand.

I couldn't breathe.

She straightened, still turned away from me. "Hmmm," she said, looking off in the distance.

I looked to where she was looking. The word 'Rosalie' scrawled up the side of the distant tree looked back at me.

"Could a human do that?" she asked me as she looked at the perfection of her art.

"Maybe?" My answer was more like a question.

"How?" she demanded, still looking there, but her face was hardening.

"Well, I guess if they were standing close to the tree? And were really, really good? And ..." I tried to imagine the scenario. I had, after all, watched the boys on the baseball team throw a ball across the field. I guess it could be doable for somebody.

"Could _you_ do that?" Rosalie interrupted.

"Ummm ..." I began, and grimaced. Yeah, I wasn't supposed to say that anymore.

Rosalie turned and looked at me but not angrily. She looked at me speculatively, waiting for my answer.

I looked at the tree. There was just no way. I looked back to her and shook my head.

She was gone. I turned toward the tree to see a blur of a white torch arc toward it: it was Rosalie. She stopped at the base of the tree, coiled, and leapt straight up.

If you keep seeing impossibilities, do they become easier to believe?

No, they don't.

Rosalie leapt up, and it must have been more than one hundred feet that she ascended. And she reached upward, touching the sky with her fingertips.

Those fingertips then slammed into the tree, right above the 'e' that finished her name written in snow on the tree.

She hung there for a second, legs dangling. I wondered what she was trying to do.

Then she jerked a couple of times, and rested there for another second. I could almost feel her eyebrow raise in consternation.

But then her legs came up against the tree trunk, and I guess her feet dislodged her from the tree, because she started to fall.

And as she fell, she must have been crossing her perfect, beautiful hands against the tree trunk as she fell, because I saw pieces of the tree flying away from her in both directions. It was like if the tree were a person ... well, if the tree were _me_ ... then she was scratching through the skin and muscle and bone and marrow, tearing away pieces of it as she fell along that body powerless to stop her.

When she touched earth again, her name was gone, scattered throughout the forest. Then she kicked, hard, at the base of the tree, and it toppled, falling to the earth beside her, a skeletal remnant of what it was.

She walked back to me, and, looking at me significantly, said "Rule number one."

I looked at her in confusion. I had no idea what she meant, but I knew she didn't like to hear me say, "Huh?" gaping like an idiot, so I just shut my mouth, staring at pure beauty ... pure heart-wrenching, terrifying beauty.

"Come on," she said, looking back at me, shaking her head. She looked disappointed in me. Or was it rueful?

I commanded my feet to follow her, and we walked along in silence for a while.

"Rule number one?" I asked quietly. I still couldn't figure out what she meant.

"One rule," she intoned, "no exceptions."

Her explanation wasn't helping at all.

We walked along for a bit. Then she asked abruptly, "Would you like to sit and talk?"

I looked up. She was holding her hand out, pointing to the tree she felled. Not the splintered tree. The tree with the cross embedded in it. How the Hell did that appear out of nowhere?

I guess it would help for me to look beyond my feet when I was walking, huh?

Um, is to okay to say 'huh' if it's just in my thoughts?

Rosalie was looking at me, still indicating the tree.

No, I guess it wasn't. I guess I shouldn't say 'um' in my thoughts anymore, either.

I nodded in answer to Rosalie's question, and we walked to the tree and sat. I sat on the depression that Rosalie had made into the tree ... my seat, and Rosalie sat on the other side of the cross.

I remembered the thoughts I had when Edward was calling on me, thoughts about being somebody different — about being a lady to match his gentlemanly behavior — but I never thought that it would be so hard, watching my every thought. Thinking before I said anything. I thought I did. I thought what I said made sense.

But that was before. But now?

I sighed.

I looked at Rosalie looking off into the distance of the forest, so casually sitting right next to something that was supposed to ward her off. She wasn't warded off. She didn't even look bothered by the cross, right next to her. She looked ... contented. She was just sitting there, looking relaxed. It was a look that I liked seeing on her.

"Why is everything wrong about ... well, you?" I asked her. "I mean, they say that a cross is supposed to, like, scare you off. Why do they say that if it doesn't?"

Rosalie shrugged disinterestedly, looking away, thinking.

She said after a second: "I don't know. Maybe it did happen that way to somebody who saw something, who saw it that way."

"How could they see a cross scaring off a vampire when it doesn't? Are there different kinds of vampires, and it works on bad vampires but it doesn't work on good vampires, you know, the ones that don't drink human blood?"

Rosalie did look at me then, then looked away again. She had her eyebrow raised slightly when she looked, like she was curious, but she said something different than what curiosity would say.

She said softly, "There are no such thing as good vampires. All vampires are bad ... through and through."

I didn't agree, but I didn't want to get into the whole argument again about her being kind.

So I changed course. "So why do people say the cross works when it doesn't? I mean, what could have somebody've seen to make them say that?"

Rosalie looked back at me, then looked away again and smirked.

"Dead men don't tell tales," she said.

Do I need to add she said it cryptically?

Well, 'huh?' wasn't going to work, I knew that from hard won experience.

"Could you explain that, please?" I was pleased that I could ask a lady-like question in the face of my confusion. Maybe being a lady wasn't all that hard to do.

"Yes," Rosalie responded.

And I waited for her explanation.

And I waited.

It was nice outside — cold but peaceful and quiet — but eventually I lost patience. "Well ...?" I prompted. Again with a lady-like calm, but Rosalie wasn't making this 'being a lady' any easier by being cryptic and difficult.

"You asked if I could explain myself, and I can. I am completely capable of explaining myself." She lectured her explanation of her explaining herself to me. "Did you mean to ask if I _would_ explain myself?"

Hm. Perhaps being a lady wasn't all that easy after all. I controlled my tone when I answered, "Yes," I said, then added explicitly, _"would_ you please explain yourself?"

I wondered if adding sugar on top would help any.

"Yes," she responded and smiled. I wondered if she was playing more mind-games, because she paused for a second, but then she did launch into her explanation.

"Maybe somebody did hold up a cross and did shout: _'vade retro Satana,' _ to a vampire, and maybe the vampire did leave, but maybe that vampire left with a squirming victim in her arms, so she was leaving anyway because she had what she wanted already. Maybe that was the scenario, and then that story was repeated from hamlet to hamlet and from town to town."

"So maybe that did happen ..." She paused. "... one time. But all the other times? I'm sure the person did lift up their cross and shout those words, confident in the supposed efficacy. But I'm just as sure that what followed would be that person's final shock of their life. Every other attempt most definitely ended in failure, but who would be there to report that result?" And she added grimly: _"Dead men don't tell tales."_

"But," she said after a pause and gave me a reproachful look, "your inquisitive mind is going places again that does not concern you."

_Well, at least she wasn't shouting at me. _I thought this ruefully. In fact, she said that last bit rather gently ... gently for her, that is.

"Is 'rule number one' my concern?" I whispered this question carefully, looking at the ground in front of me.

"You are the demur one, aren't you?" she asked in a lilting voice that betrayed something like surprise.

I risked a look at her. "You aren't scolding me, are you?"

"Hm?" Her voice and her look were distant. "No. Scolding you? I was admiring you."

My eyes widened in shock, and she looked away quickly as she explained herself.

"It's just that people Back East are so much more direct. Is this a Midwest thing, the humility and shyness?"

She looked at me again and smirked.

I blushed, of course, and dropped my eyes again.

Rosalie chuckled.

I don't know if I can tell you what that sound was like: light and easy, relaxed, yet it was musical and enchanting at the same time. Mesmerizing. That's what it was: her laughter was mesmerizing, and the way it mingled with her scent ... I wanted to keep hearing it. Forever.

But then she continued in a more serious tone. "Yes, 'rule number one' pertains to you. One could even go so far as to say it's your only concern ... and mine. But that might be hyperbole."

And the way she spoke her words, in those measured tones, and the words that she used, and ... well, if this what being a lady entailed — speaking that way and laughing that way and moving that way and ... _being_ that way — then I'd better tell Rosalie to give up her project before it frustrated her. Well, before it frustrated her _more._

"So ..." I added, helpfully. Maybe if I spoke less words, it'd raise her ire less often.

"So, what's 'rule number one,' hm?" She asked for me, and I nodded in response.

"Let me ask you a question." She turned to me as she said this. "What would you say if you were told that there were creatures that were impenetrable? That they appeared to fly? That they 'lived' forever? That they drank blood? What would you feel if you were told vampires were real, and you were presented with irrefutable evidence?"

I looked at her. Then I thought about it. "I guess ... I don't know ... I guess it would make sense." I shrugged.

Rosalie frowned. "You wouldn't be jealous?" I shook my head. "You wouldn't be afraid?" I looked down and shrugged at that.

"Why is that?" she asked quietly.

I knew the answer to that one. "Because I've seen you, and the ..." I paused as I remembered their names weren't the _Hales _before I said their correct name, "... Cullens. Jealous? No, from what you've said it sounds ... hard." I was going to say something like "terrible" but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. "And afraid? Well, the Cullens seem nice, and you ..." I stopped because I didn't know how to continue.

"Hm," was her reply layered with thought. "Perhaps I was asking the wrong person, and perhaps your encounter with the only vampires that wouldn't consume you and the ones you love as soon as they saw you has tainted your perspective. But can you think like every other person in the world for a moment?"

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"Every other person would be terrified and would be envious. 'Live' forever? Monstrous strength and speed? Invulnerability? And on the opposite side of the coin: vampires? Real? Every person, once they became aware of that, would fear for their mortal lives, and rightly so. And in that fear they would band and they would march out into the world in a panicked mob, killing many innocents: 'She's a vampire!' they would scream, and kill you for the paleness of your skin. But then they might find a way to destroy our kind. And that," she ended with a very ominous tone, "cannot be allowed."

"And that is 'rule number one.' For people do not act on things they do not contemplate or know. And if they do not know vampires exist, they will not act and learn and eventually destroy the indestructible things that we are. So any knowledge pointing to vampires must be destroyed, to keep the people ignorant and docile. And anybody who knows vampires exist, or has seen one as they are? Well, they must be ..." and she shrugged.

"Oh," I said.

We were both being so quiet as we spoke. It was if we were respecting the quiet of the forest with the quiet of our voices.

I felt Rosalie's eyes on me. "How are you?" she asked.

I thought about that. How was I? "Well, a little thirsty, I guess." I recalled I hadn't drunk since this morning, and the sun was past the high point of noon.

I heard a nothing of a whisper from Rosalie: "So am I."

My head snapped up at that, and I looked at her sharply, but it was if she didn't say anything: her lips were sealed and her face was impassive.

She rose. "Shall we continue? We're about halfway there."

_Ah!_ So I was right about the distance. I guess my directions were off. Way off. But I wasn't watching carefully as we walked and as she carried me. My mind was filled with just too much else.

So much for this being a nice and relaxing break from the intensity.

I stood, but now it was Rosalie's turn to look at me sharply.

"What?" I asked. I'm sure I zipped up my trou. Besides, how could she tell either way? The coat I was wearing almost reached to my ankles.

"You're pushing yourself," she accused, her eyes narrowed in what she was trying to make a scary look.

The look worked.

"Well, ..." I began. I thought I was getting up naturally from the tree. Sure, it was an effort, but I wanted to do this. I loved this new-found freedom of walking about in the open like this.

"'Well' nothing," she growled back. "I told you not to push yourself for now. That's for later."

She scooped me up and ran us back to the cabin.

My thoughts were in turmoil as the cabin approached us in seconds, so much faster than our walk out from it took. One word was at the eye of the storm in my mind: _Later._

What did she mean by that?

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

If one goes to fashion-era-dot-com and looks up 1930's flop hat (1930's hats are a drop-down selection at the top of the 'Sitemap' page), this is the hat I saw Rosalie wearing as she escorted the girl through the forest.

The story of Samson and Delilah is told in the Bible, the book of Judges, chs 13-16.

The cursive writing that Rosalie inscribes up the right-most tree is in the style of the banner for this story on twilighted-dot-net. Thanks to the skilled artist and fan-fiction author Roonie for providing the banner for this story.


	41. Egg Came First

**Chapter summary:** I feel it: that fissure in the marble. The crack is spreading. I'm doomed. She's doomed. I don't know how much longer I can fight. And she looks so _happy,_ wanting to care for _me._ Poor girl.

* * *

We sped into the cabin, and Rosalie plopped me down onto a chair at the table.

"Now, lunch," she commanded no one in particular.

As she appraised the boxes and bags under the sink, I started taking off the over-clothes. The exertion of walking was perfect when I was outside, but in the heat of the cabin, I became hot quickly.

"Hmmm," she said, looking at me. _What did I do?_

She took my things from me and put them neatly in the clothes pile in the corner, and then set the bowl of not-blueberries in front of me. She got a cup, went outside, came back and scooped out some water from the pot.

She set the water in front of me, got a couple of logs and stoked the stove.

"Can you wait a half-an-hour while I get some things for lunch?" she asked. "You may eat the berries while you are waiting."

I didn't see a problem with that. I nodded, "Okay," I said, and asked shyly, "Will you be getting something to drink, too, while you're out?"

Everything stopped.

The cabin was hot from the fire in the stove, but I suddenly felt cold from Rosalie's stare.

"Because ... well, ..." I pushed into her silence, "... you said you were thirsty, so ..."

"What is that to you?" Her coldness seeped into the fury she barely contained in her very controlled response. "That is not your concern."

"Oh, yes, it is, Rosalie," I snapped right back, standing up and facing her. If we were going at it, I was going to fight her on even terms, eye to eye. Well, okay, she was a head taller, so not eye to eye, so maybe toe to toe? "You can't just be pulling that 'that isn't your concern' thing all the time, because it is!"

"How could anything about me or about what I am possibly concern you?" Her posture was so rigid as she pushed her answer through gritted teeth.

"Well, you just get so surly when you being so ..." But here I paused; I didn't know how to put it delicately, and the situation seemed very delicate. We were in a fight, but I didn't want to insult her.

But Rosalie herself supplied my answer, "'Rosalie'?" she asked, quoting the word with her raised hands and giving me a superior look.

"Well, yes, or hungry or whatever," I responded, not at all cowed by Her Highness. In fact, I was definitely a little bit defiant. "And your eyes are always black now. Rosalie, you need to take care of yourself, too. And if you don't make sure you're doing it, then, well, I have to."

Here she snorted at me.

"You, take care of me?" she asked in derision.

But I felt the tension in the cabin ease just a little bit.

I ignored her sarcasm. "Yes," I replied firmly. "Like, when was the last time you ... well, you know?"

"Hunted?" Rosalie looked at me as if she couldn't believe we were having this conversation, but she finally did answer after a pause, "I drank this morning."

"See, I did, too, and I'm thirsty again, so you ..." I started my reasoned response, but it was interrupted.

"A vampire hunts at most once every ten days!" Her voice as so cold and cutting, and her arms were tightly crossed over her chest. I don't know what she was trying to do more: to hold herself together, or ... to keep me out.

"Oh," I responded.

I couldn't process what she said. She said vampires only hunt once every ten days, but then why would she say she was thirsty again if she just hunted this morning. And when she left me two nights ago after that horrible night by the mirrors, she said she was going hunting. And she said she hunted a lot in this past week or two, I mean, _a lot,_ and she had Dolly, and ...

I looked at her in confusion. She looked away in embarrassment.

"No," she whispered, "I'm not going to dally for _snack,"_ she spat out this last work quietly, looking at me severely, "for I have other obligations."

"... And so do you," she finished, looking at me significantly.

I didn't like the sound of that.

She got my notebook, and opened it for me, turning to a fresh page, and placed it on the table.

"While I'm gone, write a description of this cabin," she said, and put a pencil by the notebook.

"You mean," I swallowed, "like an essay?"

"Yes, exactly ..." she started matter-of-factly, but then looked at me. "What is it?"

I looked down.

She exhaled in exasperation. "Look, just keep it to a couple of pages," — _a couple of pages!_ — "that should be easy enough. Now, if you'll excuse me ..." and she was gone.

...

I looked at my stupid notebook as I ate the not-blueberries.

_Why was she doing this to me?_

God, oh, God! First she makes me essay myself, _then_ she makes me do algebra, _and then_ she makes me essay the cabin.

_Why the cabin, for crying out loud!_

I put another not-blueberry in my mouth and peeled the fruit off the pit. I've become quite good at it as I wrote my "essay." The berries grew on you after a while; they tasted really good after you got past the initial sandiness of their consistency.

My "essay." _Hmmphf!_ My essay consisted of all of two words so far. The word "The" followed by the word "cabin."

I was sorely tempted to add two more words to the essay: "The end." That way I'd double the size of the essay and be done with this assignment.

I mean, what in the world is there to write about it? It's just a one room cabin in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere. What's there to describe? It has a bed, a stove, the table, the triptych (with the ... well, you know ... on the other side of the lacquered engraving), and that's it. I mean, why pick the cabin for an essay? There was less to write about it than the Great War, and that was all of one sentence in my book.

"_Arrrrgh!"_ I howled, and forcefully wrote, "THE END" in big John Hancock letters.

And, wouldn't you know it? _Of course,_ Rosalie decided now was the perfect time to walk through the door.

My fury turned to embarrassment in an instant, like I had been caught with my hand in the cookie jar, and I quickly and sheepishly shut the notebook.

Rosalie paid my furtive movements no mind, however — _thank God!_ — and went right to the stove. She was humming to herself pleasantly.

She pulled out a smaller and handled pot from the bags she had brought with her and poured some boiling water in that pot, then she got out a smaller bag. She unwrapped a couple of chicken breasts from butcher paper and dropped them into the small pot and added spices to the water as well.

She turned to me and smiled. "Well. Now. While that's cooking ..." She went over to the mirrors and beckoned to me.

Oh, brother.

I sighed in resignation. Now I knew why she was cooking chicken soup. That would be just enough time for her to give up in frustration on her little "Bella's improvement project."

I walked over to the gallows.

"Okay, now. Three seconds." She said encouragingly.

Maybe I could ask to work on my essay more? I looked to her pleadingly, and met eager and hopeful eyes.

I looked away. No, she was just so excited about "helping" me. It would crush her, I just knew it, if I suggested anything else.

Well, okay. Three seconds.

I looked into the mirrors ...

... and looked away. Right away.

I looked away from the mirrors. I looked away from her. I looked away from everything.

"Look, Rosalie," I stated quietly. "I just can't do this, okay?"

Silence.

I looked over to Rosalie. I know I shouldn't have, because I knew what was waiting for me there. Anger and shouting.

But it wasn't. Rosalie was quiet.

"No," she answered just as quietly, just as firmly. "No, it's not okay. It's not okay for you to say you can't do something, and it's not okay for you to see yourself in this way."

"Rosalie," my exasperation and desperation bled into my voice, _"why?_ Why, why, why, why, why, why, why!" I was panting, and, yes, those stupid tears were coming out of my stupid eyes.

"Look," I said, trying to be reasonable, "you're going to kill me, so what does it matter, okay? You're taking your time for whatever reason, fine!" Well, it wasn't fine: it was confusing and frustrating, but that was a conversation for another time, "but this whole 'improving me' project just isn't working! I'm just a nothing girl from a nothing town from a nothing ..."

I didn't even know what to add there. I was just from a nothing nothing, and that's what I was: a nothing nothing.

"Look," I said, trying again. "It's nice and all that you want me to be a lady and everything, but that's not what I am, and I can't change, okay?"

"You've got it backwards again," Rosalie looked at me so ... sadly.

"What?" I was lost in the look in her eyes and the softness of the words from her perfect mouth.

"You _can_ change," she explained. "You are mortal. It is I who cannot. I've been judged already. I've been changed into this ... well, this nothing that I am, and the world changes around me, but I do not."

And she looked at me steadily as she said: "But you can, and you do. In fact, your body changes right now as we speak. You are in time. You change. I am in eternity. I do not. You can hope, and reach for hope. I cannot."

I remembered her list of five things she couldn't do anymore. The first one on her list was hope.

"I don't get that, Rosalie. Why can't you hope?" I asked her.

"Hope is a mortal thing. Hope is a temporal thing. Do you understand?" She asked back.

I shook my head in a _no._ No, I didn't understand what she was talking about.

Rosalie sighed. "When you hope for something, doesn't that mean that things will get better? That you will get better?"

I nodded _yes; _I was with her so far on that.

"For me, it will never get better. It will always be just _this."_ Here she waved through the empty air, but I knew she was talking more than just about the air or this cabin or me. "So I can only experience hope like the angels experience it, through you. My only hope is that you better yourself and achieve your hopes, that you be the best that you are. See?"

But there she lost me.

"And then you'll kill me?" I asked.

So I was supposed to become a lady, and then she'd be so happy for me that she'd off me? I just didn't get it.

Rosalie recrossed her arms. She was always doing that. She'd open up with something that would confuse the Hell out of me, and then she'd shut right down.

"Let's not talk about the future and what may happen in it," she started — what _may _happen in it? — "For the present, let's concentrate on the now."

"Now?" I asked.

"Yes," she answered firmly. "Now. As in the next three seconds of this now," and she reached out and turned my head to the center mirror.

I looked away, again; right away, again.

Rosalie blew out a long, long breath.

"Look, Rosalie," I turned to face her angrily, "I just can't do this!"

Was she deaf? No, she heard me, all right, I could see the anger building in her.

"Don't you get it? I just can't do this!" I was shouting now.

"_STOP!"_ She shouted louder. Much louder. My ears rung. And then I could barely hear her words as she said more quietly: "Stop saying that!"

She didn't get it.

"Rosalie, I don't know how else to tell you, I just can't ..."

Her hand flashed out and rested on my chin, a finger covering my lips.

"Do you hear that sound?" Rosalie asked very quietly, and her posture was listening and intent.

_Hear what sound,_ I wondered, _besides the ringing in my ears?_

I listened. Hard. I listened until the ringing when away. Nothing. I didn't hear anything. Rosalie removed her hand, and I raised an eyebrow, totally befuddled.

"What sound?" I asked quietly back, still listening.

"That is the sound," she replied reverently, "of the girl _not_ saying she can't do something."

I shook my head. How could I tell her that this wasn't working?

"Look, Rosalie," I just had to keep trying, "I don't even _see_ myself doing these things you want me to do or being that person you want me to be. It's just not me. I'm not that perfect person you're trying to make. I'm not. I _want _to be that person for your sake, but there's just no way. I just ca-..."

Rosalie held up her hand.

"There's that word again," she glared warningly at me.

"See?" I asked mournfully. "I ca-..."

Rosalie put her finger to my mouth, but I forced my words past it.

"... -n't even form the words to tell you what I can't do!" I finished by shouting in frustration.

Rosalie dropped her hand from my face and looked at me appraisingly.

"Maybe," her voice was speculative, "you shouldn't try to form those thoughts into words. Did you ever think of it that way? Maybe you should form thoughts that help you instead of hurt you, hm?"

Now I didn't get her. _"How?"_ I pleaded. I just couldn't see anyway of me succeeding here. Me, staring at myself for — what? — however long she wants me to?

First, why?

And, second, no way.

Her 'answer' surprised me: "That's it!" she smiled as she said this in a pleased voice.

_Huh?_ I really, really needed the vampire code book right about now.

"_Would_ you please explain what you just said?" I still remembered my lesson on the log outside, but I wasn't pleased about this. I was "making progress" by falling further and further into confusion. In short, it didn't feel at all like I was making progress; it felt like I was getting stupider. Instead of becoming more lady-like, I felt all the more foolish.

I've never felt so low and so confused in all my life.

But Rosalie seemed oddly pleased with me: "Yes, certainly," she answered happily. "What I'm happy about here is that you've taken that step. You've gone from not seeing any way for you to do something — saying 'I can't' — to looking for a possibility, a way, for you to do it — saying 'how.' See? For whatever the mind can see, it can achieve. All you have to do is to see it, and then you can do it."

I blinked at her. Her answer made it sound easy. It wasn't. I didn't see it, and even if I did, how would that help me now?

"Rosalie," I threw up my hands in frustration, and let them fall hopelessly, just like my voice sounded to me. "I don't get it. I'm not trying to fight you here. It's just that I don't get it. What am I supposed to see? How is that supposed to help me to ..." I waved to the mirrors "... for three seconds or whatever?"

"What if it wasn't three seconds?" she asked like she was trying to entice me into something. "What if it wasn't for thirty seconds?" _Thirty seconds?_ She had to be crazy. "What if you were looking into the mirrors at yourself, easy as you please, for thirty minutes or an hour, ... or longer?"

That last bit didn't make any sense at all. I knew she was using the English language, I just didn't understand the words she put together.

I stared at her blankly and waited. I waited for her to explain herself, to make the words make sense.

Her posture was leaning into me when she asked these questions, but now she seemed to relax in her stance, giving me a little room to breathe something other than that beautiful smell of honeysuckle that overpowered my reason. And that rose ... oh, that very subtle rose scent!

I was a little bit sorry that she leaned away from me, because the smell of rose was harder to tease out of the air. I wanted her close, so I could smell that scent again easily. I wanted her right next to me again, even if the ice-cold water had to be knifing into me for her to be that close again.

I recollected myself, for her words were coming quietly from her lips, and I had to pay attention to catch them.

"What if, ..." she started, but then changed directions. "Just pretend with me here, and see the vision I do," she commanded.

I nodded, listening intently now.

"Pretend you are the most beautiful girl in the world," she began, but my snort interrupted her. She put a finger to her smiling lips.

"Pretend you are the most beautiful girl in the world," she restarted, "and you are being prepared by your servants for the coming out ball in your honor, and you are dressed in your gown of finest silks, maybe something in blue? Sky blue? Sapphire? Aquamarine? I'd have to see it on you to know at the time which one would be best, so we'd need several gowns, just to be sure. And your servants are misting you with a very light perfume after you've bathed with lavender soaps and strawberry shampoo to bring out that wonderful floral scent of yours, and they are applying the very lightest of rouge and eye liner, but no lipstick at all. Just the very smallest hint to enhance your beauty that needs no enhancement at all. And they are brushing your hair, then combing it, then brushing it again, so lovingly tending to you. Hour after hour they do this as you regard your reflection, making sure the perfection that is you is perfectly represented. For this is the most important day in the world: the day you are being introduced into society. Can you see it?"

I was entranced. Her words weaved a spell, and I was totally taken in by it as I looked at the most beautiful woman in the world telling this fairy tale. I saw it.

"Yes," she said, and turned my head to the mirror.

And then the spell was broken. It was if the image in my mind was the mirror's reflection, and it shattered into a million pieces, and what was left was me. Plain old me. Plain old horse-manure colored hair and eyes me with pasty skin.

I turned away, looking at Rosalie, because I wanted to see something beautiful again after what I just saw, and I felt the tears in my eyes.

My throat was so tight that it hurt. "Rosalie, I just can-..."

She raised her finger to _her_ lips this time. "Shhhh," she commanded, but not harshly.

"Yes, you can," — she just didn't give up — "and you will."

"Rosalie," I sighed, "there's no way. That girl you were describing? I know who she is, okay? She's you, okay? She's not me; she's you."

"Wrong again," she answered. "That girl _is_ you, and you saw it, even if it was just for a second. And you shall look in this mirror, today, for three seconds, even if we have to take it a second at a time."

Well, maybe I could do a second...

"Starting right now," she commanded.

Now I wasn't so sure.

She sensed my weakness, my wavering.

"Be strong," she ordered. "You can do this. It's just one second, but you have to fix that image in your mind of yourself triumphant, ..."

Here I just shook my head.

"... triumphant _and beautiful,"_ she demanded, "and look right into your soul and see it until I say you may look away."

"But it'll be just one second, right? No cheating, right?" I asked suspiciously. Leave it to her to make me stare for, like, fifteen hours.

"Yes, I'll tell you after one second, but it will feel much longer, so you have to place your trust in me." She looked at me with such sincerely that I felt ashamed for feeling that she might want to cheat on me.

"Hokay," I breathed.

"Okay," she smiled. "Now, look."

She didn't turn my head this time. I had to. I did. And I looked.

And I looked and looked and looked.

"There!" Rosalie's voice released me, and I felt a smile in it.

I looked away, forcing myself not to fall apart. That felt like a lot longer than a second. That felt a lot longer than _three_ seconds, but I was suddenly shy about calling her on it.

Rosalie moved to the table. "Would you like some lunch?"

I looked in confusion from the mirrors. "I don't have to do this again now?"

"Not unless you wish to ..." she began. I moved quickly to the table and sat down.

"No, thank you," I responded.

She smirked at me. "Well, then," was the only answer I got from Miss Pleased-With-Herself. She went to the sink and got a box of spaghetti from one of the newer bags and opened it.

"Um, Rosalie, what are you doing?" I asked her hesitantly.

She turned to me and raised her eyebrow. "I'm completing the preparations for your lunch. See? Chicken noodle soup: very wholesome." She seemed so pleased.

"I'm lost, Rosalie, was in front of the mirrors for two hours just now?" I asked her. _Was it that long?_

She looked at me, perplexed. "No, just a couple of minutes. Why do you ask?"

"Well," I answered, "because the soup will be wholesome after a couple of hours of cooking, but now ...?"

"A couple of hours?" Rosalie repeated my words in shock. "A couple of hours of this stench?" I didn't know what she was talking about, the smell coming from the pot was mouthwatering. But then again, the smell of blood — salt and rust — made me faint dead away. Maybe that's what things that weren't blood smelled to her. Then she looked confused, "But the steak was fine after a couple of minutes ..."

"Yes, Rosalie," I informed her, "because that was steak. Chicken has to be cooked through. All the way through. Didn't you know that?"

"No," she whispered, crestfallen, "I didn't know that." Her voice became even more wistful as she explained, "Chicken broth was always prepared for me. I never knew what went into making it."

This was a real shame, because I was really hungry by now. And that chicken broth? _Ugh!_ I was feeling my stomach cramp with want for just that.

Well, I always rescued Pa, I suppose it fell to me to rescue dejected Rosalie now.

"Welp," I said easily as I got up from my chair, trying to be casual to diffuse the situation, "let's see what we can put together for a lunch."

I looked in the bags. I saw a loaf of Kleen Maid Sliced Bread. There was my answer. I remember when pre-sliced bread came out, and it was the greatest thing, since ... well, since ever.

"Ah! Excellent! We can make PBJs!" I exclaimed.

It looked like Rosalie didn't understand what I meant, but she caught on quickly when I pulled out the bread and reached for the peanut butter.

I felt shocked to find myself flying through the air, but then I landed gently in my chair. Rosalie had caught me.

"Please let me make that for you!" Her words started to blur together in her excitement. "I-was-going-to-make-that-to-accompany-the-soup-anyway!"

Before I could answer, she had already blurred to the counter by the sink. Two slices of bread flew onto a plate, she picked up a knife and then quickly pulled the jar of peanut butter out of the box.

Then I heard it. Glass shattering. Oh, no. I guess she didn't pick the jar up carefully enough.

I had _so_ wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, I suddenly realized.

Rosalie was facing away from me, and she was very still now. I guess I had better check on her.

"Rosalie," I said, rising. "Are you okay? Did you get cut on the glass?"

She was so quiet. Her head and shoulders were bowed, and despondency was just pouring out of her.

I stood next to her.

"Rosalie?" I asked quietly.

"I ruin everything I touch," she didn't look up when she whispered this so quietly. She was holding the shattered jar of peanut butter in one hand, still pretty much in its original shape, but the oil had oozed out, and the glass had firmly embedded itself into the peanut butter, and probably into her hand, too. She held the knife tightly in the other hand. I had a sudden fear, seeing her brought so low, that she might do herself a harm.

"Hey, hey!" I whispered consolingly. "Where's Miss Positive-you-can-do-anything that was just here a second ago? It's okay, okay?"

She looked up at that with sad eyes, a spark of hope in them.

"Do you mean I can still make you the peanut butter sandwich?" she asked.

Um, well ...

"Well, no, Rosalie," I chuckled, "unless you were planning enjoying watching me die coughing up blood ... speaking of which, how's your hand? Are you hurt?"

From the look on her face, she did look hurt, deeply. "I couldn't even make a peanut butter sandwich for my father when I was a human girl," she said, shaking her head in disgust. "You'd think now I could do just one thing right without ..."

She stopped suddenly, and I saw fury cross her face as she blurred in place. Then I heard it, the muffled crack of the jar of peanut butter hitting something. I looked to where Rosalie was now looking. The jar of peanut butter was now splattered in a tight clump against the wall across the cabin by the door.

"That has to be cleaned up," I noted dryly. I made to move to do just that, but Rosalie's voice stopped me.

"I'll do that;" she said harshly, "it's my fault."

"Well," working on being calm. One of us had to be calm here. It looked like it was my turn. "Let me just check your hand before you do that to make sure you are okay, okay?"

"My hand," Rosalie's voice barely contained her fury, "is fine."

She put the knife down, and stalked off muttering something like, "check my hand." I looked at the knife. The handle was now grooved with a perfect hand-print, Rosalie-sized. I looked over to the hand-print-maker in question. She had retrieved a towel, wiped her hand clean of the peanut butter (I could hear the glass grating against itself, and I winced in sympathy), and was now gathering the remnants of the jar of peanut butter stuck on the wall, still muttering to herself.

She put the towel full of peanut butter and jar shards in the center of the cabin, then fetched another towel and went to the stove, passing me, picked up the large pot and poured that boiling hot water over the towel, returned the pot to the stove, took the towel and wiped the spot on the wall clean of all traces of her anger.

The whole time she didn't look at me once.

She threw the wet towel next to the one full of peanut butter and went to the center of the cabin by the towels. Then she dragged her eyes up to look at me finally.

"I'll get another jar of peanut butter, it shouldn't take me long," she said quietly.

"Rosalie," I said, "I don't want you to get another jar now. I've had enough adventures for lunch already."

"There's no adventure in getting a jar of peanut butter," Rosalie replied pragmatically.

"Nor in making a peanut butter sandwich," I answered right back.

Rosalie dropped her eyes and whispered, "Touché."

"Rosalie," I said seriously, and waited until looked at me again, "you really need to control your temper."

"Yes," she gave me a small, sad smile, "I really do, don't I?"

"Yes," I responded firmly, "you really do."

I stared at her intensely; I really meant this.

Rosalie's smile left her face. All that was left was sadness.

She looked at me for a moment, then straightened up, looking at me so sadly.

"I'm sorry," she said.

It was nice — and unexpected — that she apologized, but I needed more than that.

"Rosalie, why did you do that?" I asked her. "It was just a peanut butter sandwich."

Rosalie looked away and shrugged, looking lost.

"Are your parents like that?" I asked her.

She looked back. "No ..." and she paused, "I mean, I guess not. From what I know my father was always so even tempered, so distant, and my mother? Well, she ... no, I guess she wasn't like that either."

So, it wasn't her parents. "Did they let you do that when you were growing up?"

She shrugged again. "I don't know. I suppose not. I suppose they wouldn't allow me to do that."

I was confused. "I thought you said you couldn't forget anything. How come you don't know?"

Rosalie looked at me intensely for a second. "Everything in _this_ existence is ever before me. But my human life ..." She looked away. "It's mostly gone." Then she looked back. "I don't know most of who I was or what made me. I don't know my own brothers' names any more. I don't know my best friend Vera's husband's name. I didn't even know ..." — and here she whispered — "I didn't even know some of the men who raped me or what they looked like, I had to find that out, person by person. Most of all my human life is gone, and all that's left is ..." She blew out some air angrily. "... all that's left is this angry, vicious monster. All that's left is _this."_

"How can that be?" I asked. "How can you remember some things and not others? Why don't you remember everything?"

She looked at me in quiet for a moment. "Just be grateful that you will not be in the position to find that out."

I pressed: "But you're still you, aren't you? How could you not remember everything from you human life?"

She tilted her head to one side and gave me the oddest look. "What am I?" she asked. "What are you?" She ignored the towels and strode purposefully toward me, raising her hand to chest height.

"Am I touching you?" she asked. Her hand was inches from my chest.

I looked at her. Why was it that I was always so lost whenever she spoke?

"No, Rosalie, your hand is ..." I started, but stopped.

And gasped.

She had taken one more step forward, and now her hand rested on my chest.

Her gaze bore holes into my eyes.

"Am I touching you now?" she asked.

My breaths came in short gasps, and my heart was beating a mile a minute under her hand. I was lost in the depths of her eyes again, as I felt myself being pulled into her. I noticed, for the first time, that her eyes, pure black, seemed to be pulsing ever so slightly.

"Yes," I gasped out an answer.

"Am I really?" she asked, her voice filled with doubt.

I couldn't answer, so she did.

"No, I'm not, I'm touching cotton, not you. But if your shirt weren't between us, I would be touching skin."

"Is your skin you?" she demanded.

All I could do is shake my head from side to side in a _no_. My eyes couldn't leave her intense black eyes as I breathed in the scent that was _her._

"You are right. Your skin is not you, so if I were to press just the slightest bit, I would be holding your heart beating so rapidly now in my hand. Would I be holding you?"

The walls started to fade, as the honeysuckle and rose scent grew stronger, and I started to feel funny again. I started to feel myself go away. It was just her hand, her scent, her eyes and my heart flying like a hummingbird.

Rosalie's eyes narrowed, and her hand shifted. The next thing I knew I was sitting in the chair facing her, and she was standing on the opposite side of the table by the sink.

She answered her own question, quietly, but intensely: "No, your heart is not you. So if it's not your shirt, and not your skin, and not your heart, what, then, is you?"

"Is it your memories?" She seemed to pick up a new thread. "If you memories fade away into blackness, but you know you had had them, would you lose yourself when you memories were gone?"

"I don't ..." I cleared my throat as I refilled my lungs. "I don't know, Rosalie."

"But certainly you know yourself, don't you?" she asked rhetorically. _"Know thyself,_ and all that. Certainly the self is the one possession we truly have, so it must be the one we know the best, hm?"

"Certainly," she asked quietly, "you know what you are, who you are, and why you are ... don't you?"

I dropped my eyes in shame. But then, suddenly, I had a flash of inspiration. I looked right back up at her.

"Do you?" I asked her.

Now it was her turn to look away quickly, but she did answer. "Yes, I do."

_Of course_ she did, even when she seemed lost, she was always so self-assured.

"Will you tell me?" I asked.

She looked back at me, measuring me ... and finding me wanting. "Not now," she responded evenly.

"When?" I felt a little bit bolder that she didn't just say _no_ or shout at me.

"When you are ready," was her response.

"Oh," I said. I knew what that meant. _Mother knows best._ That may as well as meant _no,_ because it sure sounded like that she would say, "Oh, you need to do this" whatever it was and then keep on adding to that list forever.

"Is throwing peanut butter part of that answer?" I asked quietly.

"I wish it wasn't," Rosalie responded ruefully, "but I suppose it is. I've been trying to tell you what I am, and now you see it."

"I don't believe it, Rosalie," I was getting ticked at her _oh-I'm-so-bad_ refrain. "You just told me you didn't grow up like that, so it's not you. You've been trying to sell me a bill of goods, but I'm not buying. You say you're a mean vampire, but you're not, and I know you're not. A mean vampire wouldn't be taking care of me like this, accompanying me on a walk to the outhouse and feeding me three square meals and making sure I brushed my teeth and everything."

"'Mean vampire' is redundant," she stated in a correcting tone. "This isn't _Wizard of Oz_, my dear girl, there aren't good vampires from the North and South and wicked vampires from the East and West."

"Besides," she continued, "if I were this chimera you imagined, how do you explain that?" When she asked this question, she waved at the now clean wall.

"I told you you get surly when you get peckish," I answered peevishly. "Maybe next time you won't be so superior and instead listen to me when I'm telling you what's good for you."

She looked at me in awe.

"What?" I asked in confusion.

"You really do believe you have to take care of me?" Her voice was filled with wonder and disbelief.

"Well, yeah," I answered matter-of-factly — _ didn't she get it?_ — "somebody has to."

She gasped out a surprised snort. "Will wonders never cease?" she asked herself, looking at me.

"No," I answered firmly, "but throwing peanut butter better. So, are you going out to eat now?" I asked, business-like, as I rose from the chair.

She just looked at me like I was some new person, or something.

"No," she eventually answered. "Aren't you hungry now, anyway?"

"No," I answered, "I'm not hungry, I'm starving!"

"'Famished' is more appropriate," she corrected.

"You know, Rosalie," I said after I grimaced, "I just got an idea. I think part of your problem is that you're just too hard on everything, including yourself. I think you should soften some of those hard edges of yours. Quit trying to turn me into a lady, because it's just not working and it's making you frustrated, and maybe ease up on yourself in that department, too, you know?"

Her face hardened. "That," she waved to the wall, "is what comes from unladylike behavior."

"No," I retorted, "that is what comes from you being too hard on yourself. You want to be a lady, fine, but don't beat yourself up on every little slip, lunch may not have been chicken noodle soup or PBJs, so we'll make do with something else. No big deal."

Rosalie's eyes furrowed. "We'll make do with what else?"

"Well," I said, rubbing my hands together, "lessee."

I started rummaging around the bags she had just brought in.

"Ah!" I exclaimed. "We'll make toad-in-the-hole!"

"You prefer French cuisine?" Rosalie's question was filled with confusion.

"Huh?" I asked. Now I was the one who was confused. "Oh, sorry, um, I don't know if it's French or not — I don't think so — but it'll only take a couple of minutes to make, so let's give you a pick-me-up first."

Rosalie looked even more lost. "I have to go miles to find ..." Suddenly, her eyes became stormy. "No, don't even ... where are you going?"

I was now standing in front of the mirrors, smiling, and waved her over to me.

Rosalie gave me a cautious look as she glided over to me. "Who are you?" she asked disbelievingly.

"Just one more second, okay?" I answered. "Don't get yourself excited and don't start expecting anything either." I pointed an accusing finger at her.

"Okay ..." she answered hesitantly.

"Tell me when one second is over, okay?" I demanded.

Rosalie nodded.

I turned to the mirrors and looked into my eyes, trying to see that fairy princess that Rosalie had described.

She wasn't there. It was just plain, old me, but I kept looking for Rosalie's sake.

"Okay, you're done," Rosalie said, releasing me.

But I kept looking. _One Mississippi._ Just plain, old me. _Two Mississippi._ Making sure Rosalie was taken care of. _Three Mississippi._

I looked at Rosalie and smiled. "Was that three seconds?" I asked with a note of triumph.

Rosalie's face was totally unreadable.

She reached out with one hand, cupping my cheek, and I felt the burn of my blush as it seared against the cold of her hand. She took her other hand and rested it, lightly, on my shoulder. Then she leaned in ... closer, ... and closer, ...

And her forehead touched mine as here eyes stared into the depths of mine, and she said in a fervent whisper, "I am so, so proud of you."

And I felt her breath caress my face, and I could only breathe in _her._

And then she bit her lower lip and looked away quickly.

I couldn't breathe.

Just as quickly, she let me go and stepped away.

As I caught my breath, she answered my question. "Yes, that was three seconds."

"Just now," I panted, "or was that the total for the day?"

Rosalie smiled. _God,_ she was so beautiful when she smiled like that! "For the day," she answered.

"Oh," I answered disappointed. I thought I had done three seconds just now.

But then a thought cheered me. "So I'm done for the day, right? No more mirror time, right? _You said."_ I reminded her.

"That's right," she answered easily. "No more compulsory mirror time."

"What does that mean?" I asked suspiciously.

"Well," she smiled again, "if you wish to spend more time voluntarily ..."

"No, thanks," I answered and quickly made my way back to the sink.

Rosalie chuckled.

"See," I turned quickly back to Rosalie, almost bonking into her. It turns out she had followed me. _Creepy silent vampires._ "I told ya that would be a pick-me-up for you."

"And you were right," she answered.

"Ooh!" I said. "What's today's date? I'll have to put that one in my journal: _Rosalie admits I was right._ Lightening up, see? It works."

"Yes, all right, little crowing mortal," Rosalie answered primly, "you made your point, but that in no way deflects me from working on your social graces. I'll make you a lady yet!"

I groaned, which elicited another chuckle from Rosalie. Well, we could work on her ideas about this grand remaking-of-Bella scheme of hers over time, I suppose.

"Why don't we make lunch first, okay?" I asked. I turned, and pulled out a cast-iron skillet from the bags and put it on the stove. Boy, that baby was hot. I got out the oil and coated the bottom of the skillet and then put the oil away, blotting my forehead with my sleeve.

"Now," I commanded. I got out two slices of bread and reached for the knife.

My hand hit Rosalie's chest.

"_Jeez!" _I exclaimed in shock, "warn a girl!"

"I think it would be better if I handled the knife," Rosalie stated firmly.

"I'm not a little girl anymore, Rosalie," I retorted, "I can han-..."

"Both ends," she interrupted forcefully, "now have sharp edges, thanks to my fit of pique, and we cannot afford to have you bleeding, hm?"

"Okay, okay!" I conceded grudgingly. I did see her point. "Well, then, cut a circle in the center of the bread for me, will you?"

Rosalie did. "Like that?" she asked. I saw two little quarter-sized holes in the bread.

"Nope," I answered. I grabbed a slice, folded it into quarters, and took a big bite. "Thzis bhig," I said around my chewing. The bread tasted really, really good to my empty stomach.

Rosalie cocked her eyebrow at me. "We really need to work on your table manners, too, I see. They aren't exactly Emily Post."

I waved nonchalantly. "Later," I answered after I swallowed my big bite.

"Now, would you please put the bread into the skillet?" I asked her. She complied as I rummaged in the bags again. I pulled out a carton of fresh eggs and a spatula.

I handed the spatula to Rosalie. She looked at it quizzically. I giggled.

_Rosalie holding a spatula._ I wish I had one of those new Contax cameras. It was one of those new-fangled ones, too: 35mm and everything.

"How amusing!" Rosalie didn't look amused. "What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Well, you brought it, so you should know." I smirked. "Just wait for the bread to singe then flip it over, okay?"

She did that almost right away. I still couldn't get over it. Rosalie standing by the stove, cooking lunch. It was a perfect domestic scene, all it needed was Rosalie wearing an apron to complete the image.

While she was carefully flipping over the bread, I snuck the other piece into my mouth and chewed quietly.

"I heard that!" Rosalie said, concentrating on flipping the second piece.

_Drat! Caught!_ "Cahn't help it!" I complained. "Hunhgry!"

"Don't speak with your mouth full," Rosalie scolded and turned to me, waving the spatula warningly.

"All right, already! No time for this; there be toads to cook!" I proclaimed.

Rosalie looked at me as if I were some space alien or something.

_What?_ She's the mythical creature here, not me!

"Now," I said. I cracked open an egg, walked over to the stove and emptied it into the bread hole. Then I went back to the sink and cracked open the other egg, emptying it into the other bread hole.

"So, when they're cooked on the bottom side, flip them over, okay?" I asked. Well, okay, I didn't so much ask as ordered.

"Why don't you do that?" Rosalie asked. "You seem to be the expert here."

"Well," I quipped. "I can't stand the heat, so I'm getting out of the kitchen."

Now it was Rosalie's turn to groan. I ignored it, pleased with my quick-on-the-feet répartée, made a show of excessively wiping my forehead, and sat in the chair farthest from the stove, where it was, like, half a degree cooler.

Rosalie shook her head at me, but I saw her fighting to hide her smile. She looked like she was about to say something.

"Now," I commanded, "flip the eggs, already!" _Jeez!_ Was she cooking chicken in the skillet? No, she was cooking eggs!

She gave me this imperious I'm-only-obeying-you-to-save-the-eggs look and turned back to her work.

"So, do you preface every statement with 'now' when you feel you've seized command of the situation?" The words floated over from the stove. That Rosalie; she couldn't resist getting her digs in.

"Anytime you want to serve those eggs, there, is fine with me." Did I mention I was starving? Or, according to Her Highness, _famished._

Rosalie got a plate, poured the slices in, and placed it in front of me.

"Wait," she commanded.

_Grrrr!_ Wait for what?

Rosalie got out tea things, and had a cup of tea and the silverware in front of me, and sat across from me, shielding a little more heat from the stove.

I looked up at her, and I felt a wicked grin cover my face. "So, which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

Rosalie sighed. "Okay, I'll bite." But then she frowned and muttered _"poor word choice"_ to herself. But she quickly recovered seeing my irrepressibly good mood. "I don't know, o happy girl; which came first?"

"The egg!" I started laughing in the middle of my answer. "See? I'm eating egg first, and then later I'll have chicken when it's ready ... geddit?"

Rosalie looked at me blankly, and I was just about to explain it, when she held up her hand.

"That is sad, sad, so very sad!" She scolded me in dour tones, shaking her head, but I saw her lips twitching upwards.

I sniggered, and then I dug in.

_Heaven!_ I just found out what Heaven was: toad in the hole.

Or it would have been, if I had some coffee. I sighed as I took miserly sips of the tea.

Rosalie watched me eat for a moment, but then got up, went to the boxes and pulled out one of the cans. She forked out a whole tomato onto my plate. It, too, was gone in seconds.

"Ahhhh!" I sighed when I cleaned my plate.

"Was that good for you?" Miss "How amusing" asked sarcastically as she took my plate, waving me to sit when I made motions to take care of it myself.

"Oh, yeah! That really hit the spot." I responded contentedly, reclining in my chair.

I burped, covering my mouth with my hand, and made embarrassed excuses.

Queen Rosalie raised her eyebrow at me from where she was at the sink.

"So it would seem," she commented dryly. She returned to cleaning the plate.

I watched her for a moment.

"Rosalie, ..." I asked shyly.

"What is it?" Her back was turned to me as she washed.

"Did your ma leave you, too?" I asked quietly, looking at her back.

"What makes you say that?" Her back was still turned to me as she dried the plate.

"Well, you said you had to take care of your pa, you know, making him lunch and everything, so I wondered ..." I ended weakly as Rosalie turned to regard me with thoughtful eyes.

"No," her eyes slid away from me. "She didn't leave our family ..." and I thought I heard her murmur _"... unfortunately."_

"Was she that bad?" I asked. I couldn't imagine a child unhappy with her parents, but it seemed like that was what I was looking at.

Rosalie's attention returned to me. "Bad?" I couldn't tell from her tone what she meant. "Look at what happened to me! If she hadn't pushed me toward that murd-..."

But then she stopped.

"No," she said firmly. "That's uncharitable of me. She always did the best she could with what she had. It was she who took care of my brothers after both my father and I died. If she had left, who would be there for them? My brothers are alive and being looked after by their mother. And that is the best that they could ask for given their current situation. No, she didn't abandon us. Why do you ask?"

Suddenly I was very embarrassed. I had been prying, and felt ashamed for it.

"I'm ... I'm sorry, Rosalie. I was just wondering, 'cause ..." I swallowed and looked down at my hands on the table, "'cause I had to take care of my pa after my ma left, and it sounded like you had to do that, too, is all."

"Always trying to find a nonexistent similarity, aren't you?" Rosalie's voice pierced me. "Always looking for some kind of connection?"

I didn't look up.

But then I did. "Where's my sweater?" I had the sudden need to hold it.

Rosalie's onyx eyes and silence pierced me just as much as her voice did a second ago. I swallowed again. She pointed to right where she was sitting.

The sweater was there, draped over the chair back. I guess she had washed it again. Maybe during my fainting? And there it was, right there across from me, drying.

"Oh," I said. Rosalie picked it up and brought it to me. "Thanks," I murmured, and buried my face in it. It was washed; it smelled of soap and nothing else.

"Rosalie, ..." I asked.

"Yes?" She looked at me from the sink, so remote.

"Would you wear this for a while, please?"

"I'm going to hazard a guess as to why you are asking this, hm?" Her eyes narrowed to slits. "Do you know why you like the smell of me so much, hm? Do you?" She took a step toward me, and suddenly the hot cabin cooled noticeably. "Do you know why my scent calls you to me, mortal?" She was right in front of me, and I looked at her looming over me. "Do you?"

"Rosalie, I don't care. I don't care! I just ..." I was panting and breathing in that beautiful smell of honeysuckle with just a hint of rose, and I didn't care what it was for.

Rosalie picked me up by pressing my arms into my sides. My face rested on her shoulder, my lips brushing against her cold, cold neck, and I could _taste_ her, her scent was so strong now, and my heart was beating to burst, and I felt her lips touch my neck, and I wanted _this. _I _wanted her._ I wanted this more than anything in the world.

And she spoke right into my neck, and I felt right on the point of death. I felt it.

"It's to bring your little neck right to my mouth so that I may drink you dry. That is what my scent is for, little mortal." Rosalie hissed. The sound of her angry hiss was more beautiful than angel choirs. It had to be. It was the most beautifully menacing sound in the world.

Then she placed me, very gently, back in my seat, and took the sweater from my nerveless hands.

"That is what my scent is for." Her dispassionate words floated out from her perfect mouth as she regarded me coldly from beside the sink.

"Rosalie, I ..." I realized my cheeks were wet. Tears were spilling out of my cheeks freely. "I don't care." I whispered helplessly. "I don't care. I just want ..."

But then I couldn't speak past the lump in my throat, so I gasped around the tightness of it.

Rosalie regarded me coldly, then she shook her head. She turned away from me, and I thought it was because she couldn't stand the sight of me anymore.

But I was wrong.

She pulled off her own shirt, tossed it onto the pile of clothes in the corner of the cabin, and put on my sweater, and turned back to look at me.

If you put a loaded pistol to my head, upon my life I would not be able to tell you what shirt she was wearing seconds ago. All I could see was her, now, wearing my sweater. If you threatened to pull the trigger, I couldn't even tell you the color of my sweater she was now wearing. All I could see was her, blurrily, through tear-filled eyes, wearing my sweater.

Then she uttered something I never would've thought to have heard: "You are the most dangerous creature in the world."

And all I could do was to look at her through blurry eyes, totally lost to her meaning. I tried to say something, but I couldn't. Anyway, what would I say, even if I could?

I don't know how long Rosalie looked at me, and I, at her, because I didn't know I was supposed to track it by counting Mississippis.

Rosalie broke the spell. She looked away, then came to me, grabbing my tea cup. I watched her the whole time as she left the cabin, came right back in, filling it with water from the big pot and replacing it beside me.

"Drink up," she ordered, "you need to get ready for quiet time."

I lifted the cup to my lips and drank, emptying the cup after a few gulps. Rosalie came to me, taking the cup in one hand, and offering me her other. I took it, that cold hand, and it led me to the sink. She handed me the tooth brush and power, and I took care of the teeth then gargled the Listerine mechanically. After I spit out the green goop, Rosalie carefully blotted my face, wiping away the tear tracks, with a wet towel.

I just stood there as she took care of me, wearing my sweater.

"Outhouse?" she asked.

I nodded a _yes_ in response, and she blurred away from me, returning seconds later to scoop me up into her arms. The woods blurred past us, and I was standing in the steam-heated outhouse watching Rosalie light the candle.

"I would have liked to have walked," I said quietly.

"Enough exercise and enough adventures for your first day out and about," she responded crisply. "We'll see how you are doing tomorrow."

"Oh," was my intelligent reply. "What's 'quiet time'?"

"You'll find out soon enough," she responded unmoved. She waved to me. So I unbuckled, dropped trou and sat.

"Rosalie, are you angry with me?" I looked at her as she stood impassively.

She raised her finger to her lips. "Shhh," she hushed me, "why would you think that?"

"Because I asked you to wear my sweater, and that made you angry."

She gave me a small smile. "Not your fault. I get angry so easily, don't I? Everything that I am now angers me. My fault; not yours."

"But I reminded you of that when I asked you to ..." I began.

"Shhh," she said again. "You need to decompress for a couple of hours from all that you've experienced today."

"Why do you keep doing that, Rosalie?" I begged.

"Doing what?" she asked calmly.

"Why do you keep flipping like that? One moment you're, okay, I'm going to say it, you're kind, and then the next moment you shut down or shut me out or you're furious, and then the very next second you're taking care of me. Why do you do that?"

She smiled cryptically, and she eyed me sadly. "Because I'm a mean vampire, you told me that yourself."

I just shook my head. "I wish ..."

"What do you wish?" Rosalie asked quietly after a moment of my silence.

"Never mind," I said, because I didn't even know what to wish. I didn't even know that I could hope to be able to wish any kind of wish now.

"I'm done," I said. And I was done going, but I knew _we_ weren't done. I wondered if we ever would be.

Rosalie took care of me and the outhouse and raced me back to the cabin. And I looked at her, the perfect, beautiful vampire, where everything physical came so easily to her, and where everything mental, well, that came so easily to her, too.

I looked at her, and saw the perfect mirror of me. Everything was easy and perfect and beautiful and scary and sweet for her, and everything for me ...?

We reentered that warm cabin, and she sat me on the bed, went over to the pile of clothes, and stripped off my sweater, putting her shirt back on, and came back to me, holding my sweater in her arms.

The last time she did that by the sink, I was too shocked to know what I was seeing. This time, did I look?

You bet. I looked. I looked hard. All I saw was her back, her perfect back. I would kill to have a back like Rosalie's.

She stood in front of me, and if there was a definition of stillness, it would be Rosalie, standing there, looking at me.

"And now," she stated impassively, "quiet time."

And she extended my sweater to me.


	42. Vampire Cookbook

**Chapter summary:** _What? _ Why are you screaming: _"Don't do it, Bella!"_ Rosalie didn't say I couldn't read her book. Besides, who are you, anyway, to tell me what to do? I've got a vampire doing that to me already, so I don't need your help here, thank you very much.

* * *

She was doing it again.

You ever get that feeling that someone's staring at you? I have that feeling. Boy, do I have that feeling right now! But I know what'll happen when I look up from this book. I'll see exactly what I've seen the last twenty times I've looked: Rosalie's eyes, firmly fixed — determinedly fixed — in that book with the lines and the dangling squiggles for writing.

Oh, you can bet I've tried to convince myself that I'm just imagining it, and I would have believed myself, and I would have believed Rosalie's "don't mind me, I'm just reading this book and not looking at you" eyes glued in her own book.

That is, I would have believed it, if I hadn't been with her day-in and day-out for the eternity that we've been here in this cabin. I would have believed it if I had heard the pages turning in that impossibly fast way they turned when she read a book: every second, another _flip_ of the page. But now there was silence of the pages _not_ turning as she kept "reading" that one page.

I would have believed it if my whole focus hadn't been to pick every nuance from her every expression during that long three days of her silence and then the following torrent of feeling and words that followed.

And what did that time of studying Rosalie teach me?

It taught me this. Her completely blank expression now? Too blank. When she was engaged in her "usual" communicating with me (well, communicating in her utterly confusing manner), her face had some, well, life to it.

This face? This blank face? This blank face with eyes fixed in her book?

She was hiding something from me. And that something that she was hiding? She was hiding that she was staring at me.

I looked up from the literature book as quickly as I could. I sensed no movement from her, but I _knew_ it. I knew she _was_ staring at me, just now, and that she moved her eyes back to her book before I could catch her.

_Damn it!_

You ever have somebody stare at you, without you knowing? Creepy, right? Now have that someone be a vampire.

Yup. Like I knew what the last three pages of poetry I read said. _Sure_ I did.

Well, this time I was going to get her.

I lowered my head back to the book, but I kept my eyes fixed on her.

Two could play at this game.

I turned a page, pretending to read, then, after a minute or so, I flipped another page, watching her the whole time. Nothing. A minute later, I flipped another page, staring, hard, right at her.

Her eyes lifted from the book, and locked onto mine.

_Ha! Caught ya!_ I thought triumphantly, pleased with my victory for the tiniest of seconds. Her staring eyes turned embarrassed for a second, flickering away, ...

But then they locked right back on my eyes. And what was their look?

_Hungry._ She was staring at me _hungrily,_ and suddenly heat of my victory turned rather cold. I felt my hackles tingling, and my game turned from the victory to the consequences.

Rosalie rose slowly from her chair, and now I was rather glad the table was between us, and I was also rather glad that I was lying in bed on the other side of the cabin from her.

We both spoke into the silence at the same time.

"Rosalie ..." I began a little bit fearfully.

But Rosalie's words stopped me: "I... I..."

Her words ... they were lost; they were embarrassed; they were confused. I don't remember her looking like this ...

... except when I first got my period ... and she smelled my blood.

I didn't have the slightest idea what was happening — what was _about_ to happen — back then. But I had more than a slight idea now.

She was transfixed, and she couldn't seem to be able to break out of the spell that she put herself under, reading her own book. She stood there, stock still, holding on to that book like it was a lifeline, a book I now felt the utmost hatred for. I just knew that this situation was all its fault somehow.

She was staring right at me, and I saw her move, ever so slightly, toward me. I looked in shock to the sound of squealing coming from the table. She didn't even seem to notice that she was pushing the table forward as she inched toward me.

"Rosalie!" I barked out a shout, and I saw the slightest bit of awareness return to her hungry coal-black eyes. I knew I had to do _something,_ because she seemed incapable of pulling herself out of this ... _whatever ..._ she was under.

"Rosalie," I said a little bit more calmly, but still very firmly, "put that book down, right now_,_ and go ..." — what did she call it? Oh, yes: "... hunting ... _now_."

Reason began to return to her face, and with it, embarrassment. _Rosalie embarrassed._ That look gave me another worry to add on the already overflowing pile. She looked away quickly, turning her whole face from me ... but I could see her: she swallowed, hard.

She turned her head back to me and put the book down. Looking so lost, she opened her mouth, but, again, the only thing that came out was an embarrassed "I..."

I cut her right off: "Rosalie: go, now."

Reluctantly, she moved to the door, not looking at me at all. Working very hard not to look at me at all, in fact. She put her hand to the latch.

"Rosalie," I said. She stopped, but didn't look back at me. "We _will_ be talking about this when you get back."

That last warning earned me a considered look. And even a coherent question.

"How is your sanskrit?" she asked me cautiously.

"Rosalie," I sighed, "we can talk about my penmanship _when you come back,_ okay?"

I said 'coherent' question; I didn't say 'comprehensible' one. But I also didn't have time now to play the 'what does Rosalie mean' game right at the moment.

Confusion crossed her face at my answer.

"What?" she asked.

"Ro-..." I began, but stopped at her palm raised to me. I saw what looked like relief replace the confusion on her face, and she was gone. The door closed behind her, silently. It was if she was never in the cabin, only the lingering scent of honeysuckle and rose a testament to her presence.

And only the uncontrollable shaking that now overtook my body a testament to what had just almost happened.

_God!_ That was close ... that was almost too ...

I grasped the pillow to my chest and curled myself around it in a ball, holding onto it as the quakes passed through me. A loud bang announced that my movement had pushed the thick anthology of literature off the side of the bed. I heard gasping, and realized it was me. The firm mask of control I had so fiercely maintained in Rosalie's presence during the crisis shattered entirely in the aftermath.

...

Quiet time started so promisingly!

You know how the relaxing walk to the bathroom turned out? Well, this is how what was supposed to be quiet time became, too.

I don't know: I suppose I should always be ready for the other shoe to drop. I suppose I should know by now when something starts out so wonderfully that this is what turns out, but I mean — _really!_ — how could I predict all this when she handed me the Austen compliation? Even her warning of "One chapter _only"_ at my gasp of delight didn't dampen my excitement.

Of course she knew I wouldn't hear a word she said, waving that book around like that, so even before she brought out the book, she told me the rules for "quiet time."

What is it with vampires and their rules, anyway? ... well, it was just one rule ... what is it with vampires and their "one rule" for every occasion, anyway?

And even I could guess at that rule: silence. Two hours of silence. I could read. I could write. I could draw. I could sleep, but no talking.

Two hours of reading without Rosalie's cross examination. What could be more perfect than that?

I turned right to _Pride and Prejudice,_ chapter one, and let the world disappear into Netherfield and Longbourn and the Bennett's delightful concerns.

But then I got to this phrase: "... though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.''

_My little Lizzy._ Hm. "Lizzy" was "Li-..." something. I had guessed before that Rosalie wouldn't call me that, but when I had asked for _Pride and Prejudice_, she promptly sucked out my soul, so maybe ...

I looked up from my book. Rosalie was burning through the book she was reading, the pages going _flip-flip-flip_ in that impossibly fast way that she can do everything perfectly. I saw the gold embossing on the deep blue cover.

She was reading the Bible. She was almost finished with the whole thing. No, she turned from the end to somewhere in the middle and resumed burning through it like the cabin was on fire, or something.

"Rosalie, ..." I began.

She raised a finger to her lips: "Shhh," she scolded, "it's quiet time."

Then she resumed her reading.

But this was too important to be shushed aside.

"It doesn't mean anything," I said quickly in one breath.

Rosalie stopped turning the pages and frowned at me. She put down the book — the _Good Book,_ in fact — on the table.

"What doesn't mean anything?" she asked. I heard a bit of annoyance in her question.

"My name," I responded calmly now that I had her attention. "It doesn't mean anything. It's just 'Bella Swan,' that's all, you can call me that, just because it's my name. It doesn't mean that I have to be beaut-..."

"_Your name," _she grated our her interruption through gritted teeth, _"means everything!"_ Her hands were clenched into fists, and she had risen from the table, her angry words lancing toward me from across the cabin. I noticed the chair didn't bang onto the floor, however: even in her anger, she was graceful beyond compare.

"_No,"_ I sat up in the bed and shouted back at her, _"it doesn't! It doesn't mean anything, okay? You don't have to ..."_

"_Your name means nothing, hm?"_ Rosalie shouted right back.

And here a flash of thought interrupted me: _so much for 'quiet' time._

"_YES!" _I shouted through eyes tightly shut, _"so you can just call me Bel-..."_

"Girl." Rosalie's musical voice, now no longer shouting, still cut through what I was saying.

"No, Rosalie," I said, opening my eyes and explaining quickly, "that's not it, you can just call me ..."

"I can just call you 'girl' because you told me yourself: your name means nothing to you." She sat back down, and picked up the book with a self-satisfied smirk and recommenced reading. _Flip-flip-flip _went the pages.

"Rosalie, no, that's not what I'm saying at all ..." I began.

The pages didn't even stop this time. She didn't even bother to look up to deliver her callous retort.

"Either your name means something, or I can call you anything or nothing without it mattering. You can't have it both ways, ... _girl!"_ The smug words floated around the _Good Book_ to find their mark to pierce me with ease.

"Ro-..." I tried again.

"Shhh!" came the chiding hiss: "Quiet time."

"Are you even _reading_ that book?" I demanded.

_Flip-flip-flip_ went the pages. Rosalie ignored my question.

_Hmmphf!_ Not sure if I liked this as much as I thought I would have. I returned to _Pride and Prejudice._ Where was I? Oh, yeah: "... _my little Lizzy."_

_Jeez!_

...

It didn't even feel like seconds later that I heard the silence. I looked up in time to see Rosalie _throw_ the Bible into the book bag. She was muttering under her breath, even growling softly, and I couldn't quite hear her words, but they were something like: _"I should have known ..."_ and something like _"sawdom and gamor-" _something. And she looked at me furiously, then turned away, muttering something like, _"her father wouldn't do what Lot did ... what my family allowed."_ And I didn't understand any of it, other than something she read in the Bible made her angry.

Then she grew quiet and still, and I felt fear in the pit of my stomach. She reached slowly into the book bag, and pulled out the leather bound book with the lines and squiggles on it, and sat back down, and started reading.

_Flip-flip-flip_ went the pages, and Rosalie's nose was buried in the book, the stormy clouds creasing her forehead smoothing with what I thought to be calm, so I thought everything was okay again.

I finished chapter one of _Pride and Prejudice,_ returned the Austen compilation to her, and she offered a "read from one of these whatever you'd like" from the Western Civilizations book and the literature anthology. I chose the lit book and returned to bed, excited to be exploring the stories and poems that I had see before and the ones that I hadn't.

I was pleased that quiet time had settled down and was glad everything had returned to normal, feeling blissfully content and safe.

I was wrong.

...

As soon as my trembling stopped, I got right up from that bed and marched right over to the table. In my haste and fury, I nearly fell flat on my face when my own sheets tripped me up, but I kicked my legs free and forward just in time. I was just too angry to be embarrassed, however: I was on a mission.

I picked up that damned book and marched right back into bed. I covered myself completely and hid the book under the covers, just to play it safe, and opened up the leather binding to the first page ...

I spent a good deal of time fruitless looking for something, ... anything. But what I got was page after page of nothing. Just lines with dangling squiggles.

But then I felt it. The magic. Just like Rosalie. My eyelids became heavy, and as I was drifting off, helpless under the spell of the book, I realized what I had in my hands. I realized what my heavy eyelids were giving butterfly kisses to. I realized was I was drooling on as consciousness succumbed to the power of the lines and squiggles.

I had been wishing for a vampire code book so I could make sense out of the utterly confusing pronouncements Rosalie continuously made, and now I held it in my hands.

...

I'm dreaming.

I realized it. But somehow I was still here. I was still in bed, I was still in the cabin, I still had the leather bound book in my hands.

But I knew I was dreaming. I had to be. I _had_ to be. Why? Because the words on a book cover don't quiver like that when you're awake, right? The lines and squiggles on the cover of the book resolved themselves into words that I could read as easy as day. I could read the title perfectly, and it said: "Vampire Code Book."

_I knew it!_

I now realized why Rosalie was confused when she left. She wasn't asking me about my writing. No, 'samscript' or whatever that word was, meant 'Vampire writing.' She was asking me if I could read her book.

Maybe humans could only read Vampire in their dreams. I turned eagerly to the page that Rosalie was stuck on. It was easy to find: her scent curled up out of the page, forming luminous trumpets of honeysuckle and showers of rose petals in the æther between me and the words of the book, and the words themselves quivered from the lines and squiggles, resolving themselves into words.

And I read the words.

And I wondered, if you die in your dreams, do you die for real?

The words on the page said this:

"Vampire Cookbook: Virgins, Recipe XLII

First, feed a young girl some steak cooked rare, marinate her with some red wine. The next day provide some berries of blue color for her to eat. Mix well by taking her on a walk, and heat the blood properly by confusing and then angering her. Drink her at your leisure during her ensuing nap brought on by exhaustion."

When I finished reading those words, I tried to close the book, but I couldn't, because I felt it.

Her presence.

Dread filled me as I looked up from the book and turned my head to look right into Rosalie's eyes.

The coal irises burned with a black fire. Her lips parted into a smile that showed perfect teeth, glinting and sharp.

"Ro-..." I breathed out in shock, but I didn't get to finish, for her cold, cold, stone cold, honeysuckle and rose scented marble hand covered my mouth and gently tilted my head back.

Her face grew large in my vision as she leaned toward me ...

...

My gasp of indrawn breath shocked me into wakefulness.

I looked down at the book. It was again in illegible lines and squiggles, but out of the corners of my eyes, I thought I saw the ones out of focus just ever so slightly quivering. I snapped that book closed firmly, but I couldn't suppress an involuntary shudder.

And then I felt it.

Her presence.

_Oh, God!_ I hope I'm still dreaming. I turned my whole body, and I saw her.

She was sitting at the table, a pen in her hand, and she was annotating another book, as easy as you please, ignoring the fact that she was about to suck out all my blood in my dream.

No, wait a minute! She wasn't annotating just any old book, she was going through _my journal!_

"Ummmm ... excuse me, ..." I cleared my throat. Here Rosalie looked up at me, and I pointed to my journal, "... but that's mine."

Rosalie looked down at my notebook, turned to the next page, glanced at it cursorily and grimaced, then looked back at me. Suddenly, in her stillness, she seemed to shrink, the edges of her becoming indistinct, her mannerisms and carriage became different, somehow, and from that difference she pointed at the code book for vampires I was cradling in my arms.

"Ummmm ... excuse me, ..." and here I gasped, because my voice — _my exact voice_ — came from her now tentative mouth, and her look and manner? I knew it now, she was imitating my hesitancy! She continued relentlessly in her imitation: "... but that's mine."

She was transforming, right before my eyes, into me.

And I had thought the dream I had just had was scary. My grandmother was right: Rosalie was doubling me, right down to the hunched shoulders.

"Rosalie," I gasped, "stop! Please, stop! Just ..."

The shimmering indistinctness resolved back to that powerful, perfect creature I knew to be her, ... thankfully she didn't resolve further into me. She looked at me from her now perfected stillness with a raised eyebrow.

"Rosalie, why did you do that?" I asked, still scared out of my mind at seeing her transforming into me.

"The correct question," she demanded imperiously, "is why do you?"

"I thought it was quiet time," I groused.

"It _was,"_ she replied sardonically. That's when I noticed the darkening sky tinting the window with violet and orange.

How come you don't feel the passage of time when you sleep?

I shrugged angrily. How come she gets to win even the conversations that I sidetrack?

So I returned to her original question. "Rosalie, that's just how I am, is all."

"No, it's not," she stated absolutely.

Trying to tell Rosalie something was like trying to convince a stone wall of something. I guess I could add 'literally' to what I just thought, couldn't I?

"Rosalie," I sighed, "tell me what I have to say, okay?"

This seemed to displease her. "That's just it, isn't it? The world tells you what to believe you are, and you listened, didn't you?"

"Um, what?" We appeared to be back in the 'not making sense' conversations.

Rosalie grimaced. "The world tells you not to be noticed. The world tells you not to offer your view, not even to have a view. The world tells you to bow your head, to submit, to give up, to give in ... and you, the good, little, obedient girl that you are, you listened, didn't you?"

"So I have to be this, like — what? — rebel, 'cause you're telling me to?"

"It's not either-or, girl," she said irritatedly, which, along with the 'girl' dig, irritated me more, too, "Don't listen to me, don't listen to the world: find _you_ and listen to her."

"So you can read about her and add then your own little notes with your own red pen into _my private journal?"_ I fumed, shooting daggers at her from my eyes.

"It had better be private," she fumed right back. "It had better be!"

"What do you mean by that?" How could she demand it be private when she had her fingers all over it, for crying out loud, she still had it open, not even embarrassed about going through _my_ things.

As her answer, she flipped forward three pages and, not even glancing down at the page that fell open, she read my own "living with a vampire chaperon" rules right back to me.

"What is the meaning of this? Do you know what will happen to anybody who comes across these words?" she demanded furiously.

As if anybody ever would. As if anybody would ever believe a single word they read. The only way anybody would believe I wasn't writing fiction would be if they were me or if they saw Rosalie after her funeral.

I rolled my eyes at her ridiculousness.

"I'll guard it with my ..." _foreshortened_ "... life, okay, Rosalie?" I replied sarcastically.

"You'd better do better than that!" My response didn't assuage her one bit. "You'd better guard it with theirs!"

"What?" I asked in disbelief.

"_Anybody_ who sees this?" she asked, pointing down at my journal, "I'll kill them where they stand. Do you understand me?" And she enunciated each of the words that followed: _"Where they stand! That _is Rule Number One, _not_ your _guide_ for confident speaking._"_

I sat up in bed and shouted: "Oh, Jesus Christ!" I began, but then a sharp pressure forced my head forward.

"Hey! Ow!" I yelped in pain but mostly in surprise.

Rosalie was standing right by me, glaring.

I rubbed the back of my head, and Rosalie removed her hand.

Oh, that's what caused the 'ouch'-moment.

"What the _hell_ was that for?" I demanded.

Rosalie got this superior quoting voice. "'At the name of Jesus'" and here her head nodded forward as she intoned, "'every knee shall bow.'"

"Where the _hell_ does it say that?" I seethed, angrier than I ever remember being.

How come I'm always angrier than I ever remember being when it comes to being with Rosalie?

She waved over to the book bag: "Philippians."

"_Philippians?"_ I screamed.

Now I was seeing red.

"Chapter 2, verse 10, to be precise," her voice cut right through my anger.

"Oh, Jesu-... fer crying out loud!" I changed course quickly there, because I saw Rosalie's hand come up, menacingly, and I didn't want a bruise or a bump back there. "I can't believe this! What? That has got to be a first! A ..." and I waved to her. I was tempted to say the 'V' word, but everything seemed to be spiraling out of control, and I didn't know what would set her off next. "... reading the _Bible_ and working for God Almighty!" I snorted in disbelief. "What?" I continued on my tirade, "Did He come down from Heaven to give you His own special ..."

But then I stopped.

Rosalie was suddenly looking away.

She whispered angrily: "Don't be ridiculous!"

She whispered it angrily, but not at all convincingly.

I looked at her in silence with the stunned realization.

_Oh, my God!_ She said she was on some kind of mission, but I didn't know she was a religious fanatic! A vampire-religious fanatic. A Doppelgänger-vampire-religious fanatic. I hadn't known how this situation could have been worse than what it was, ... and then this happens. I just know that this doesn't bode well for the future when I think how I've hit bottom, only to find myself dropping through the bottom.

What next?

Um, is it okay if I can unask that question? Somehow, questions like those always seem to be answered in the most unexpected of ways.

"Okay, Rosalie," I said firmly, after the shock of it wore off, "from now on, no more Bible-reading for you."

She starts reading the Bible and becomes a fanatic? A sure way to limit the whacks to the back of the head was to cut her off right now. Bible-reading is just no good for a person: gives them too many weird ideas.

My words washed over Rosalie, and she crossed her arms, glaring at me furiously.

"You are not to give me orders," she commanded.

"Oh, but it's okay for you to give me orders?" I countered hotly.

"No, it's not 'okay'!" She was seething.

"So why do you do it, then, if it's not okay?" I demanded.

"Because, ..." she answered angrily. "Because I must. Because I am able. Because I am the only one who can do what must be done. That's why."

"Who died and left you in charge?" I retorted furiously.

Silence.

Rosalie glared at me, arms crossed, anger written across her face.

Um, whoops.

"_I_ died," she hissed out.

_Oh, God!_ I instantly regretted my angry retort.

She looked at me, shaking her head, and her anger melted into regret. "I died and left me in charge."

I regretted my retort, but I was still angry.

"As always?" I asked bitterly.

"What?" Her regret changed to surprise.

"Look, I'm sorry, Rosalie, for everything that's happened to you, okay? But it still doesn't change the situation. You're in charge now. You were always in charge, weren't you?" I asked. "Everybody always did what you said, didn't they? Must be nice." I added spitefully.

Okay, okay, I know that _I_ wasn't being nice, and I really shouldn't have said that, but, for crying out loud, she kidnaps me and bosses me around? After a while that wears a girl down. And let's not even start with the flipping behavior of hers.

"Nice?" Rosalie asked, shocked. _"Nice?"_

"Yeah, _nice, _always having your own way ..." I responded, but Rosalie cut right into my words.

"_I am a Hale!"_ she drew herself up to full height as she proclaimed these words. "A Hale does not _have_ her own way; she _makes_ her own way."

"Like you're making your way through _my journal?"_ I snapped back.

Like I said. I'm not a particularly happy camper now. Too bad she couldn't speak during my period: she really would've gotten what-for, then, if she gave me any of her superior attitude. Hm. I wonder if she became a vampire when she was having her period. That, actually, would explain a lot.

God! Stuck eternally in the worst part of the cycle? That would be bad.

"_I told you_ ..." she snapped right back, but then she drew in a long breath, closed her eyes and blew it out slowly. She opened her impenetrable eyes and looked at me in quiet for a second and started over again, speaking slowly and softly. "I told you I would be reviewing your algebra exercises, and that's what I was doing, but I can't help but take in everything now. It is intrinsic in my nature to observe everything, and what I observed ..."

She shook her head and held up a conciliatory hand. "I apologize. Yes, you will record your thoughts and feelings. I should have known you would be doing that. I should have allowed for that. But this _cannot _go beyond you, okay?"

I looked at her looking so sincere. It was almost as if she were entreating me.

I nodded my assent solemnly.

She came over holding my notebook out to me. I took it. She held out her hand for her book. I looked down at the title of a line with some squiggles and put that book into her hand.

The flash of hot anger between us seemed to have been replaced by something felt like an aftertaste of sorrow.

"Don't worry about the exercises today," her retreating back said quietly as she headed toward the table, "we'll begin working on them in earnest tomorrow."

I took a quick peek into my notebook. The exercises were covered in red crosses and circles. I don't think it would be redder if I bled on it.

"Rosalie ..." I called out.

She stopped, but didn't look back. "I said don't be concerned about it now."

That's not why I spoke, however. "I know why you had to leave," I said quietly.

Her back stiffened.

"Are you going to do that to me?" I asked.

She turned around and looked at me guardedly.

I looked down, wanting to bury my head in the pillow, and glad that the blanket was hiding most of me.

"I read it in your book. It's okay, I guess, because you can't help it, ... you know?" I looked at her, trying to make her understand that I understood.

"What did you ..." Rosalie was so still as she asked. "What did you read in here?" She held up the book in question.

"The part about ..." and here I buried my face in my pillow "... virgins."

My face was in the pillow. But I'm sure she saw my blush as I felt it burning the back of my neck, just as I surely heard her gasp.

"I suppose it'd be best at night, you know?" I continued as distinctly as I could into the pillow. "When I'm here in bed? It'd be easier for you ... for me ... for us that way, right?"

It was quiet for a while. A thoughtful quiet. Then, into the quiet, her voice whispered carefully, "I thought you didn't know how to read sanskrit."

I looked up from my pillow, still very embarrassed, ... even more so.

"I didn't," I explained, "but then, ... but then I did, and I read the part, you know, that you were reading ... and thinking about ... doing."

Utter stillness from Rosalie. She looked at me from that stillness as my blush heated my pillow uncomfortably. I felt as if I were the one who was caught. I guess I was.

"It's okay, you know, Rosalie," I said quietly. "I understand. It's in your nat-..."

She came up to me, holding out the book to me.

"Read it to me," she commanded. "Read the part that you read."

Her voice was detached and remote, and her eyes resting on me were taking me in completely but also a million miles away.

I took the book.

"Rosalie, I can't anymore," I said.

"You can't? Or you won't? Why do you refuse now?" Rosalie asked, still distant.

"It's not that, Rosalie," I explained, "It's just that I can do it when I'm dreaming, but I don't understand the words now, see? It's like when the animals told me what they taste like to you."

"Animals?"

"Yes," I answered and added: "and when the v-..."

But here I stopped. I was going to tell her how I knew my blood appealed to her, that I understood why it was so hard for her, always having me around. But I knew, instinctively, that people who said they heard voices talking to them ...

Well, I knew that wasn't a good thing, and Rosalie had hinted about insanity already. I didn't think she needed me to confirm her hint.

So I changed course. "I meant to say 'and then Roy told me ...'"

"Royce," she corrected.

"Oh, sorry, Royce said ..." I swallowed. I guess this wasn't a good way to go either. Maybe try: "And the two police officers, well, one of them ..."

I looked away. Telling her that she killed a man with four children ... not a good idea, either.

She did come back to Earth for a second, but it seemed her thoughts were focused on me, and not what I was telling her about her: "Is that in your power? Clairvoyance? Does it manifest itself more strongly in your sleep?"

I looked back at her, not understanding what she was saying.

She became distant again. "Just tell me what you remember reading in the book," she said abstractly.

So I looked down at the leather bound book and opened it, flipping through the pages. They all looked exactly the same: incomprehensible. _Flip-flip-flip_ went the pages, just like when Rosalie was reading it.

Wait a minute. Hm. I passed it. I flipped back a few pages. And then I found the page. There it was. It looked exactly like all the other pages, but, somehow, I knew this was it.

"Here it is," I said with certainty. "It talks about young girls."

Rosalie looked down at the page that was upside down from her, and she looked into my eyes.

"Yes," she said.

I broke away from her stare and looked at the page, not being able to read one squiggle, but feeling the familiarity of it.

"It says something about giving her really good food. I remember it said something like 'berries of blue color' or something like that." I continued.

"Yes, something like that," she said.

It was impossible to see what she was thinking beyond the impenetrable mask of her blank face. I couldn't tell if she was angry with me, or ... what.

"It says ..." It was getting harder to breathe. "It says to take her on, you know, walks, and then talk with her to make her ..." I gasped. "... to make me ..." Then I looked up from the book, and I shouted in exasperation and embarrassment: "you know!"

"Tell me what I know," said Rosalie from that great distance right beside me.

I shut the book, pushed it off the bed — it hit the floor with a _bang_ — and buried my head in the pillow.

My muffled shout came from the pillow. "So you can ... _do it!"_

"Do what?" Rosalie asked quietly.

I shook my head in the pillow. My tears of embarrassment made the pillow a little bit wet.

"Do what?" Rosalie demanded just as quietly, but very firmly this time.

But the last time I explained my dreams, she ran from the cabin, and I nearly died trying to go to the outhouse. This was a performance I did not wish to repeat.

"Rosal-..." I began to beg.

"_Do what?" _ Anger crept into the tone of the question. She was going to make me say it.

I sighed into the pillow, lifted my head from it and looked at her through teary eyes.

I shouted my answer at that blurry image of perfection: _"Drink my blood! Drink my blood!_ _Drink my blood!_ Okay? Are you happy? You made me say it! Just _do it_ when I'm sleeping, okay?"

I didn't know what to expect for Rosalie's reaction. I didn't know if, like in my dream, she would cover my mouth with her hand and _take me_ right here and now, or, like before, she would run, screaming, from the cabin, or ... what.

I didn't expect what she did do.

Her mouth formed the words 'drink your ...' Then it looked like realization hit her like a wrecking ball. The air left her in a sharp _'Heh!'_ of shocked surprise, and she almost doubled over in her physical reaction.

She sucked in a breath of air, her eyes blackening further, and she sang out a relieved sigh that I could also see was a longing one, and her face brightened into a rueful smile. She looked at me with a relief so powerful that I could feel it overwhelming me.

"You ... you ..." she began, and then she stopped to chuckle for a second and collected herself. "You are the most ..." She broke off again. She shook her head, smiling at me.

I was utterly baffled. "It doesn't say that?"

She chuckled again, still smiling, beaming with relief.

"You." She said affectionately.

"I was wrong?" I pressed. I felt my blush. I felt confused and embarrassed, and I felt myself getting angry.

"No," she said. "You were absolutely right, but you were so very, very wrong. As always." She looked at me with what looked like wonder.

"You." She said again, admiringly.

Rosalie crossed her arms and looked at me smugly. But when she did cross her arms, it looked like she was almost reaching out toward me?

I sighed. It's so nice when Rosalie 'explains' herself, isn't it?

"So, when you left" — _when I made you leave_ — "it wasn't because of my ... blood?" I clarifed. "You didn't want to ..."

Rosalie's smug look went away and was replaced by a very serious one. She looked away as she answered very quietly.

"I don't know how to covey how _desperately_ I desire your blood. Yes, I wanted your blood then, but I always do."

"But you don't ... you know ... because you're a Hale, right?" I finished for her.

Her look slid to me, and then immediately slid away again. "Yes," she responded.

But I got an inkling that wasn't the full and complete answer.

"So the book wasn't, like, recipes for young girls?" I asked.

I saw the corners of Rosalie's lips twitch upward. She reached down, retrieved from the floor the book in question and moved to the table in that always elegant way of walking that made her look so regal. She sat down and looked at me.

"It does contain recipes, but not in the way you interpreted it." She beamed a smile at me.

"Rosalie," I sighed. "What is the title of the book?"

This talking in circles was confusing. I needed just one straight answer from her.

"It wouldn't make any sense to you if I told you," she replied levelly.

So much for getting a straight answer easily. But I was going to get one of her today about that book even if it kill-... well, anyway.

"Just tell me, Rosalie." I demanded, waiting for her to say the 'V' word in the title.

She tilted her to one side, examining me critically from the across the cabin.

"All right," she said, reaching a decision, "It's called the ..." and she said a word that didn't make any sense to me at all. Just like she said it wouldn't. But I didn't hear the 'V' word, either. Do vampires not call themselves 'vampires' in their own language?

"Don't tell me what it is in the vampire language," I ordered. "What does it mean in plain English?"

Rosalie sighed, again. It was if she were the one who was being put upon.

"It's not written in 'vampire language,' as you say. It's written in sanskrit," she responded, speaking down to me as if I were a little child that she had to explain things very simply to. "And it doesn't have a direct translation into 'plain English.'"

She was prevaricating, or she was obfuscating. I just knew it. But let's see her try to wiggle her way out of a direct question.

"So the title doesn't say 'Vampire Code Book,' then?" There. I said it. Let's see her respond to that.

Her response was silence for a second, as she seemed to consider her reply.

"Hm. Yes ..." she answered, and I felt the thrill of getting her to admit it.

"... and no," she finished.

Boy, was she a good wiggler, or what!

I screamed in frustration. "Rosalie!" I shouted.

She smiled at me in amusement. "It's difficult to explain," she explained. "It is a code book, of sorts, and it is applicable to vampires, I suppose, but, to be clear," — _Wow! That'll be a first!_ — "it wasn't written specifically for our kind."

"What was it specifically written for?" I asked. Her 'clarity' wasn't all that clear to me.

She shrugged, but smiled again at my exasperated sigh so she did add an explanation. "It's a book of philosophy."

"A book of philosophy?" I asked in disbelief.

"Yes," she responded, and there was no duplicity in her response.

I just couldn't believe it. "Why would a book of philosophy make you have to leave?"

"Hm," Rosalie considered. "That's really not the correct question. It didn't, but why wouldn't it? What does 'philosophy' mean to you?"

Now it was my turn to shrug.

"Just some abstract ideas from old fuddy-duddies about stuff that doesn't mean anything to anybody." I answered carelessly.

I never studied philosophy. It wasn't part of the curriculum at the Carter County school, but even if it was, it would be just another pointless topic that had no application to anything. Just like algebra.

Rosalie looked at me and shook her head. "We have so much work to do," she muttered ruefully.

I didn't get her regret. "Why?" I asked in confusion. "What does philosophy mean to you?"

"The study of philosophy is the study of things as they are," she answered, as if that explained it.

I looked at her, waiting for her explanation to make sense.

She smiled a small smile. "Not the things as we think they are, nor as we want them to be, but as they actually are. Their essence. Their being. Reality ... as it really is."

"And it's all written about young girls?" I asked. A philosophy book for girls? I couldn't believe it.

"No," she answered, "it's not all written about young girls, but to answer your implied question, philosophy applies to young girls, too."

There she goes again, reading my mind.

She continued: "I went to finishing school putting a particular philosophy for young girls into practice for years."

I felt my eyebrows crease. "But this book made you want me so badly you had to ..."

"No," she interrupted firmly. "No, that's not correct. I _want _you. _I_ want you so badly. Always. I hope you will never know the extent of it. The book has nothing to do with 'making' me want you."

"Then what does?" I asked, trying to understand.

"I am a vampire," she answered simply.

"And ...?" Yes. I knew she was a vampire. But why the sudden overpowering need?

"What is the difference between you and me, your kind and mine, really?" she asked, and waved down at her book.

_Oh, brother!_ I guess I just had enrolled in Philosophy I.

"Well, you're fast and strong and beauti-..." I began.

Rosalie held up her palm, shaking her head. "Those are merely accidents, what is the essential difference?"

I didn't understand what she meant by 'accidents.' How could she be beautiful by accident? But I guess she was looking for a deeper meaning. I thought about what was essentially different between us.

"Well, ..." I said slowly. _Ah! I've got it._ She's a vampire, so ... "You drink blood, right?"

Rosalie frowned. "No, that's not it. Again, that's an accident. Living blood is our" — here she pointed at herself — "sustenance, just as this dead food" — and she gave an elegant back-handed wave encompassing the stove and the food stored beneath the sink, and I tried to ignore the pang of hunger that wave caused — "is yours. You are still missing it. I suppose I must tell you. Have you ever wanted anything?"

I looked at her and thought about it.

"Your freedom, perhaps, from the evil vampire?" she prompted.

I blushed and looked away. "I suppose so," I whispered.

"Hm," came the thoughtful sound from Rosalie. "I guess not that much."

What the _hell_ did she mean by that?

"Calling you by your true name and not just 'girl,' then?" Rosalie tried again.

I turned, sat up straight in the bed, and looked her right in the eye. "Yes, please. Right now." I said firmly.

"There," she smiled. "So you want that, yes?"

I nodded.

"No," she answered. "No, you don't."

"What?" I didn't understand. She just said I did, then she said I didn't?

"_This_ is the difference; this is what defines a vampire. For your want will be satisfied one way or the other. Either you will get your name back, or you will die. Either way, you will cease to want. You are in time. And because of that, you do not truly _want._ You have a desire, and then that desire is filled, and the want leaves you. You hunger, then you eat, and you are satisfied."

"Not so for me. _I want._ I want blood. I drink. But does the drink satisfy the burning in my throat and the empty ache in the pit of what used to be my stomach?" She looked at me expectantly.

"It doesn't?" I asked her.

"It cannot," she replied. "For I, too, am in time, but I am also in eternity. I drink, then I thirst, and the want drives me forward. Always forward. This is what a vampire is: an eternal physical being. Being physical requires something to subsist on — a need needs to be filled — but being eternal, that subsistence can never, ever, be enough. An eternal need is a never-satisfied want ... or, more simply, a vampire is _want._ That is where our strength comes from, our beauty, our scent, our speed: all serve to satisfy this wanting that can never be satisfied. Those accidents outflow from our essence."

"But, ..." I said, trying to take in the words that were so foreign to my understanding. "But, I see you ... that is ... you're fighting it, right? Why? I mean, how can you if all you are is 'want'?"

"Yes," she answered. "Most vampires see themselves as only that — just want; purely physical — and they live their existence accordingly: feeding indiscriminately, living selfishly in their self-gratification. But I argue that there's more to us than just that. I argue ..."

She paused and suddenly looked away.

"... that you're good." I whispered.

That earned me a sharp look. "No, no, no," she said forcefully, but then she amended: "Well, not in the way that you think of as goodness. I argue that we have a will, and that will can ... well, not overpower the want, but can direct it. And that's what you saw earlier: the conflict between the will and the want. A vampire's will is so much stronger than that of a single human's. It has to be, to direct the want. But it is nothing to this ..." Here she swallowed "... this want that consumes me ... I mean, consumes our kind."

She looked away again.

"I must always be vigilant," she said quietly, almost to herself, as if she were reciting her own creed. "I must always control and curb this want I have. Just the slightest distraction, and ..." She looked at me sadly and shrugged.

"So, I thank you," she said. "Thank you for recalling me to my vigilance. I'm afraid you must be on your guard, for I am not 'good,' as you say. I want, and by definition, that is not good, but bad. I am _want_. And I always fight against it, or I hunt to satiate it temporarily. That makes me a monster, with its natural impulse to destroy you."

I looked again at the vampire speaking to me. The monster who was denying her very nature, who was fighting so hard, and I began to see how hard she actually was fighting, all the time.

"But you don't," I stated fervently.

Rosalie sighed. "Your charitable thoughts are admirable, and in your nature, but they do not help either of us. If you persist in this illusion of thinking me kind, one or both of us will drop her guard, and one moment of weakness is one moment too many, given your mortal nature."

"But you are kind!" I insisted.

Rosalie looked away and shook her head. "You would not be saying that, if you truly knew me, if you truly knew what I am."

"But that's what I'm saying: you're fighting that, you have your guard up, even if it slips, you ..."

Rosalie turned back to me. "Stop now, please. I'm feeling too much like the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale receiving the misplaced praise from his flock in the _Scarlet Letter. _ So continuing this conversation at present will only ..." She paused then amended: "... will be fruitless."

"Okay, Rosalie." I remember reading _Scarlet Letter, _but I didn't know what she was talking about. I could see she was pained, however. "But I'm not going to give on this ..." — _nor on you,_ I added the determined thought.

"I know," she said. "That, too, is in your nature." And she sighed more than just a sigh ... the sound had to be words, but I couldn't catch them.

"You betcha," I responded easily, trying to lighten the heavy tone since I woke. "And another thing I'm not going to give up on is what your book really says. You are going to read it to me and tell me what it says, you know."

"Oh, am I?" she asked in disbelief.

"You sure are," I replied confidently.

"And why is that?" she asked.

"Because you're a Hale." Now it was my turn to be smug.

"And a Hale reads sanskrit to a little confident girl ... an over-confident girl?" Rosalie was smirking.

I was so relieved she was playing along and letting go of the gloominess that had engulfed us both.

I played my trump card: "Yup, a Hale wouldn't keep knowledge all to herself, especially philosophical knowledge, that's sure to help this 'little girl' here, learning samscript and all that."

Rosalie looked at me and shook her head. "I'm not exactly sure this knowledge will help you."

"Hey," I responded feistily, "it helps you."

"I'm not exactly sure this knowledge helps me, either." Rosalie grimaced and turned solemn again.

"Let me be the judge of that. Read it to me, huh, Rosalie; tell me what it really says," I pleaded.

"No," she said seriously.

"Why not?" I demanded.

"Well, not now, anyway. After all, I'm sure you're hungry ..." She gave a small grin when my stomach answered for me.

"... and I have a surprise for you for supper," she added wistfully.

That had to be the saddest way I've ever seen that a surprise was offered. Well, with regular and predicable Pa, there were never any surprises. With Rosalie, the surprises never stopped, be they wistful or scary or amazing.

But Rosalie's sadness now, and her slip earlier ... she put this front of being strong and mean and cold and everything ... but she was more lost than anyone I've ever known. She really did need somebody.

I realized ... she really needed ... me.

* * *

**A/N: **Rosalie's wanderings in the Bible brought her to Genesis 19:8. It was then that she could read no more.

Rosalie's use of the second person plural pronoun ("our") is exclusive, and so she must be explicit to signify the context when she describes the difference between vampires and mortals. In other languages, such as Philipino, there are several words to describe groups _(tayo:_ "we including you," _kami: _"we, but not you," and _kita:_ "I and thou, one being"). I've wondered if this significance in their language predisposes them to a stronger spiritual or devotional way of seeing the world, so evident by the religious nature that pervades their culture.

The _Scarlet Letter_ by Nathaniel Hawthorne — "there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination" D. H. Lawrence — is freely available online at, e.g., Google books.


	43. Tickle, Tickle!

**Chapter Summary:** I was only tickling her to hear that sad girl laugh for once. _That's all._ But then her look implied so much more. Then she invites me into her _bed?_ With that look? No, she is an innocent. She cannot know. But if I join her in that bed ...

* * *

Supper was chicken noodle soup with PBJs.

That's what Rosalie's surprise was, I guessed, while I was napping on top of her vampire code book, she was out hunting for more than just herself. She had gotten another jar of peanut butter.

She also insisted on making the sandwiches herself, and she insisted in such a way that it would be rude of me to continue to hint about me making them possibly producing more than zero sandwiches. So I resigned myself to missing out on the PBJs for supper, too. But she surprised me there. She made the sandwiches quickly, and I couldn't tell that she was being careful, but, obviously, she was paying attention because I got the sandwiches to go with the soup. Without slivers of glass, either, so that was a plus.

This was my lucky day, I guess.

I sat at the table as Rosalie put the filled soup bowl in front of me and added the sandwiches on a plate beside it. I looked down at the feast, then looked up at Rosalie sitting across the table from me.

"Are we going to pray before I eat?" I asked. I tried to keep the sneer from my voice.

Rosalie seemed unmoved. "If you wish," she shrugged.

I looked back down at the food, my stomach grumbling ... _why am I not eating now?_ ... and looked up to Rosalie again.

"Do you pray before you, um, eat?" I asked her.

Rosalie shook her head in a _no._ "No," she answered, "but Carlisle does, before every animal he kills, every morning before he goes to the hospital, and before and after every surgery he performs. He prays in thanksgiving for the people's lives he saves, and he prays every day for the people who he couldn't save. That list now is quite long, given the wars he's been in."

"Wars? Was he in the Great War?" I asked. I wondered if he served with Pa ... silly thought that ... Dr. Hale looked too young to serve in the Great War.

"Oh, no," Rosalie answered. "The Civil War really took a toll on him, so he stayed Stateside for this last war. It turns out that he was needed here, after all, given how the Spanish Flu would have killed so many more in Chicago if he hadn't been working nonstop for weeks going from hospital to hospital."

Dr. Hale looked much younger than Pa, but ... "Did you say 'the Civil War'?" I asked.

Rosalie nodded.

"The Civil War, like, the Civil War? You know, like, the one that happened, like, here?" I confirmed. That put him around one hundred years old, give or take a decade. But then, what's a decade between acquaintances? He sure kept himself spry, I'll give him that. He was quite the looker for a centenarian.

"Yes," answered Rosalie, regarding me closely, even though her regard looked casual, "and before that he was a surgeon in the Revolutionary War."

I swallowed. She _had_ to have meant the American Revolutionary War. That just added another one hundred years to Carlisle's life. Well, _'life'_ like, _'whatever'._

"... and he would pray at each person he tried to save," she continued thoughtfully, as if she were discovering this for herself for the first time, "and being a surgeon with no little experience, he saved the lives of quite a few of them."

Then she paused and added darkly: "... that is, the ones that could be saved. The Great War gave us the term 'triage,' but the toll of it was just as terrible before the word existed."

Then she turned spiteful.

"'_Great' War!"_ she added, "there's nothing 'great' about young, stupid, idealistic boys, just like Edward, killing and maiming other young, stupid, and idealistic boys. Each patriotic musket blast in the wars preceding made a new patient for Carlisle, and each patient Carlisle loses is another baby that will never return to his mother or another young _and now dead_ husband that has left a widow and an orphan to fend for themselves in the war ravaged countryside. And Carlisle knows that, and works so desperately to save each and every one of his patients, but ... well, I can see what a comfort Esmé is to him at times ... well, all the time ... and so he prays for each of his losses, every morning. Carlisle's quite the prayerful man," then she grimaced and added ruefully, "well, prayerful _vampire,_ that is."

But I wasn't thinking about Carlisle now. I was thinking about something else Rosalie just said.

"Edward fought in the Great War?" I asked, trying to sound casual.

Rosalie saw right through it. She frowned at me. "Eat," she commanded waving to the food in front of me. "Or pray and eat."

Carlisle was more than two hundred years old. I couldn't get my head around the fact that a man that looked half Pa's age was in fact at least a century, if not a lot more, older than he is. That meant ...

"Rosalie, is Mrs. Hale as old as the doctor? ... is Edward that old?" Then I thought of something else. "Are you?"

"Hmmmm," Rosalie's thoughtful hum was displeased. "I told you about Carlisle for an entirely different reason, that is, that he prays, than what you've seemed to have latched onto. Besides, you know about my human life, you've collected the information on that. You know my age."

"Yeah!" I was suddenly shouting, "and Doctor Hale is a twenty-something-year old person who just moved into Ekalaka, according to the town records! How old are you all really!"

"A lady never is asked or tells her own age," Rosalie scolded firmly, "and I've unintentionally trespassed on Carlisle, it appears, I will not repeat that mistake for Esmé and Edward. That is their secret to keep or to share with you, not mine. Besides, age does not matter to us any more, for we are eternal now." Then she added angrily: "And I am a _Hale,_ _not_ Doctor _Cullen,_ are you saying that I'm not?"

"No, Rosalie," I said, not wanting to offend her precious Haleness, "I didn't mean that, but you could be _Nathan_ Hale's _mother_, for all I know."

Rosalie gasped, her mouth falling open. Then she became rigid in her chair, shutting her mouth, and shutting right down, looking away from me with arms tightly crossed her chest.

"Eat your soup before it gets colder," she spat the words to the wall.

I could see the steam rising from the soup. I don't think that was the problem.

I wondered: was she angry with me (again) because I figured out that she could be really old? All this talk of being eternal, but she still cared about a century here or there?

I picked up my spoon, and looked down at the bowl. I was hungry, but I put the spoon right back down.

"Rosalie, I'm sorry ... again," I apologized sincerely. "It seems every time I open my mouth I say something stupid ..."

Her head whipped around and she glared at me: "Don't say that!"

"... that makes you angry, like right now." I looked down from her angry eyes. "You said before that you shouldn't be talking to me; well, _I_ should be the one who never speaks again, and after you've slaved over a hot stove to prepare this feast for me, too. And how do I thank you for it? By opening my big stu-... my big mouth. Well, that's gratitude for you."

I buried my face in my hands.

My hands were gently removed by marble stones that smelled exactly like heaven.

"Perhaps," Rosalie said, towering over me, "you can show your gratitude by eating the food I 'slaved over a hot stove' for you," here she grinned slightly, "and by telling me what you think of it?"

I swallowed and nodded mutely. Rosalie smiled at me, picked up the napkin and blotted the tears from my cheeks.

See? I insult her, and she turns around and babies me, like a mother would nurture her only child, ... even if she was Nathan Hale's mother, even if she gets angry when I tell her that's what she's doing. Her taking care of me only made me feel worse about myself, but I put on a brave face, smiled weakly back at her and picked up my spoon.

Rosalie returned to the other side of the table and sat, looking at me expectantly. I noticed she still had my napkin. I looked at her hand holding it for a second. She looked down at it, too. She returned it to me from across the table.

Did she do it hesitantly, or am I just imagining things?

I put that thought out of my head and took a spoonful of the soup in, after blowing off the steam — Rosalie frowned at that action — and tasted it.

Hm. Chicken-y hot water.

"It's, um, it's very good ..." I said, and couldn't help but add the thought: _for a first try._

_Of course_ Rosalie read my mind. She grimaced. "You don't like it," she said.

"Rosalie ..." I began.

"Tell me what's wrong with it," she said.

"Rosalie," I said more firmly this time, "let me tell you something that I learned from my Pa. I've cooked for him for years, and some meals worked, and some ... didn't, but he always ate what was placed in front of him and said 'thank you' for the meal and meant it. And with so many people these days not knowing where or when they're going to get their next meal? And me being hungry now? And you giving me all this? It's soup, and it feeds me, and I'm thankful for it."

I slurped in another spoonful to show I meant what I said.

Rosalie grimaced again. "That's very admirable, but it does not help either of us. I cannot make it better next time if I don't know what to improve."

"Well, ..." I said. Rosalie nodded encouragingly.

"Okay," I said business-like, "remember the circles that you cut into the bread for lunch, right? Well, you don't want to put the chicken breasts whole like that into the soup, you want to cube them smaller than those too-small holes in the bread ... much smaller ... to expose more of the chicken to the broth? And speaking of broth: boiling the chicken from straight water? Not good. It needs diced veggies, right, to make a good base? Like carrots? And celery? And some salt, too, right? But not too much salt? ... just to taste, right? And you really, really need chicken bones to give some, you know, umphf to it, right? And maybe some corn starch, you know, to thicken the broth a bit, so it's not so watery, right? But you just can't throw corn starch into boiling water, you know that, right? You have to mix the corn starch into cold water first, right? And the noodles? Well, it was good that you threw them in the last minute, but elbow macaroni is better than these long noodles, but if that's all you've got, you should break them up smaller, like halve them first, right?"

I looked at Rosalie, sitting there, reeling from my few suggestions, so I ended weakly, "... but, besides that, it's ... really good ..." took another slurp, and couldn't help but adding the whispered: "... if it had a pinch of pepper, too, maybe?"

Rosalie shook her head. "No, no, Li-..." Her grimaced deepened at her mistake, but she soldiered on: "Don't hold back: tell me what you really think how it could be improved."

"Um," I said helpfully. I took another apologetic sip from my spoon of the chicken-y water.

Rosalie stood. "Stop," she commanded, "just stop. Let me get rid of that. I won't serve something so entirely unsatisfactory, and I can't stand to watch you eating something that pains us both."

I grabbed the edges of my bowl before Rosalie could.

"No, Rosalie, you stop," I ordered her. "If you can't _stand_ to see me eating this, well, then, you can _sit_ and watch me eat it. Or you can go someplace and not watch me eat it, but I'm not going to allow you to throw away a perfectly good meal just because you think it's an offense to your pride or something."

She didn't give in. "A Hale does not ..." she began.

"I don't give a damn what a Hale would do here," I interrupted. "I'll tell you that _I'll_ be pretty ticked off at you if you waste all this food and the work you put into it when all it needs is just a bit of salt" _and a good deal more_ "to make it just fine."

That gave her pause. "You mentioned much more than just salt just now."

When is she going to lay off the mind-reading?

"Tell you what, Rosalie," I compromised, "let's cut a deal. If you let me eat this soup now — that's perfectly fine, by the way — then I'll show you how I make it some other time."

"You'll show me tomorrow," she said firmly, but she did go back to her seat, after she grabbed the big bag of salt and put it on the table.

"Okay, fine," I concurred.

Chicken noodle soup two days in a row. Oh, well. As a kidnapped girl, I couldn't be too picky about the meals, I guess. I mean, did other kidnapped girls get meals at all? And not-so-wanted school lessons and not-so-quiet time?

Put that way, this cabin was kind of like the Ritz ... right?

I took out a pinch of salt from the bag and sprinkled it into the soup, then stirred the broth and took a tentative sip.

Hm. Slightly salty, chicken-y water. I took a bite of chicken and nibbled on the plain-tasting chicken thoughtfully.

Well, I discovered the one thing that Rosalie couldn't do perfectly. She sat glumly in her chair, looking at me eating.

But then I brightened up. This was something that I could help her with; something I was better than her at, and something that we could do together. I couldn't sleep for her; I couldn't cry for her, really, but she and I could make chicken noodle soup together!

Rosalie looked quizzically at my cheeriness.

"Hey, Rosalie, wanna know a secret from the old country?" I asked, glowing in the thought of the happiness to come.

"Tell me all your secrets, oh sage one from the 'old country'!" She smiled slightly, playing along with me, and brightening a bit herself.

"Har-har!" I stuck my tongue out at her teasing, and she gave me a shocked look at my effrontery. "Well," I continued, undaunted, "this is a magic spell to make both chicken noodle soup _and_ a peanut butter sandwich taste sweet. Watch!"

I dunked my sandwich into the soup for a few seconds and took a bite out of the soggy part.

"Mmm-mmm!" I hummed in delight. The magic _always _worked, and it did wonders for both here.

Rosalie brought her hands to her cheeks and opened her mouth in mock amazement.

"I am moved beyond words at the impressive show of your mystical might!" Rosalie exclaimed.

_Hmmphf! _Miss Sarcastic over there sure used a lot of words to say she was speechless.

"First 'toad-in-the-hole' and now this! What is your next miracle, pray tell?" she continued delightedly. "A hershey's bar used as a scoop to eat the peanut butter?" _Ooh! That actually sounds tasty!_ I thought. "Do you need to utter an incantation when you do this, too? If you did, I missed it. You truly are an enchantress beyond compare." She was just glowing at her own commentary.

"Okay, okay," I groused back, but I couldn't help a small smile edge my lips upward, "so it's not as impressive as all your many magic powers, but a girl's gotta start somewhere."

"I don't have any magic powers," Rosalie responded, sobering up.

"Oh, and purring me to sleep and reading my mind don't count, then?" I countered.

Rosalie sighed, and made to say something, but my stuck-out tongue shocked her into silence again.

"I win," I crowed.

Rosalie chuckled. "Yes, you, and that mischievous tongue with a mind of its own, wins."

"Ooh! Wow! Somebody's got to record these victories, really!" I was just so pleased.

"Don't worry," Rosalie said, tapping her head. "I'm doing that. But, actually, you should have some of your own happy recollections to read."

She brought out my journal and flipped to an empty page and handed me a pencil. I looked at the blank page and looked back up at Rosalie.

"What do I write?" I asked her, suddenly at a loss for words.

Rosalie frowned. "Why does writing things that create impositions for you come so easily to you, but you find your own happiness so difficult to express?"

"It's not that, Rosalie," I said quickly. "It's just that I don't know what to write."

"Is this how you see the world?" she asked sadly.

I bit down on my lip, biting down on my retort at the same time. I could ask her the exact same question, except I was a million times more right that she was.

Rosalie sighed with disappointment in me. "I will help you," she said finally. "Take dictation."

And I wrote the words as she spoke.

"'Victory number one: earlier today Rosalie admitted I was write.'" _Oops!_ I erased the word 'write' and replaced it with 'right.' 'Cause 'right' is the right word, not 'write' ... 'write' was wrong.

"Is it okay if I add to that?" I asked permission.

Rosalie gave me a quizzical look. "Yes," she said, "it's okay."

"Okay," I ordered, "don't look and don't read my mind!"

Rosalie rolled her eyes, but did look away.

I scratched out a note below it: _I looked in the mirrors for three seconds today and that made Rosalie happy, and she said she was so, so proud of me. I like seeing Rosalie happy. I like seeing Rosalie smil-..._

I thought about those last two sentences. I'm sure Rosalie would be reading my journal again. I erased my editorializing. Vigorous. _Let's just keep to the facts, okay?_ I told myself.

"Okay," I said, "I'm ready for the next one."

Rosalie looked back at me. "I think you've got the hang of it," she said.

"I want to hear you say it," I answered, pencil poised on the paper.

Rosalie resumed dictation after giving me a chiding look. "'Victory number two,'" she continued, "'I made the watery chicken soup taste better with my magic from the old country.'"

I chuckled as I wrote that and added the letters 'PBJ,' sure that they would trigger this memory. I also wanted to add something about a mischievous tongue, but couldn't quite think of just the right words for that ... putting 'mischievous tongue' ... I mean ... just those words? Doesn't that sound a little naughty?

I blushed at my own thoughts. I wondered what I looked like to Rosalie, with my mischievous tongue. What was I thinking, being so impertinent like that?

I closed my journal quickly, blushing harder, and handed it and the pencil back to Rosalie. She took both, regarding me quizzically, so I grabbed the PBJ and dunked it in the soup again.

I took another bite of dunked peanut butter sandwich and chewed thoughtfully for a second. Rosalie, I had to admit it, was no expert PBJ maker. The sandwich was lumpy, the peanut butter wasn't spread evenly at all, but clumps of it were embedded into the bread thickly in some places and hardly at all in others. _AND_ she had put on the peanut butter first; I saw her do that when she made the sandwiches — when she _insisted _on making the sandwiches — biting my tongue to keep from telling her the proper way to make a PBJ. _Everybody_ who's made more than a few PBJs in their life _knows_ you put the jelly on _first_. But making PBJs for me seemed to be something important that Rosalie had to do, so I didn't wish to spoil her moment with my pestering.

I could have gloated that Rosalie, the perfect marble statue that I thought she was, had feet of clay. But I didn't feel like gloating, ... quite the opposite, in fact. Perfect Rosalie was perfectly unapproachable: beautiful and terrifying. But Rosalie now, cooking me supper, that didn't turn out quite right, but her heart was in the right place? And this light banter now? It made me feel ... well, ... it made me feel like she was more human. It didn't want to make me gloat that I could do something better than her ... no, it endeared me to her.

"Rosalie ..." I said quietly.

"Why is it that I feel the ground shift dangerously whenever you begin a question like this?" Rosalie demanded.

I dropped my eyes. "It wasn't a question," I corrected her softly. "It's just that ... I prefer moments like this and conversations like this — you know, ones where you're not shouting at me? — to ones like we had during, um, 'quiet' time."

"Hm," she said. "I prefer conversations and moments like these ones, too."

"So, why can't we just have these ones, then?" I asked, looking back up at her.

"We can," she said, "insofar as you do not err in how you speak or think about yourself or about me."

"So I have to see myself as beautiful, even though nobody in the world does?" I asked.

Rosalie's features hardened.

_Jeez!_ _Here we go, again._

"I do not care one iota what errors anybody else entertains, and I _particularly_ dislike the errors you entertain," she stated fiercely, then added angrily: "... and _I_ am not _nobody_."

"So then you're not kind for thinking I'm beautiful and graceful?" I countered. I mean, really: c'mon! Me? Beautiful? _Graceful?_

But I wanted to see her counter that one. If she can force me to her point of view — _which she can't, because it's just not true_ — then I can force her to accept mine.

So there.

"_Correctness _does not necessarily have anything to do with _kindness,"_ Rosalie's reply was resolute.

I had forgotten there was just no reasoning with Miss Stone Wall sitting so imperially across the table from me. I wonder if she was related to that Southern General Jackson.

"Oh, brother!" I grumbled. "Just never mind, okay?"

"No," Rosalie snapped back. "I _always_ mind, and I _always_ will!" Rosalie crossed her arms and glared at me, not even allowing me to try to diffuse the situation.

"Okay, okay, already!" I shouted. "Can I _please_ just finish my supper?"

Rosalie glowered at me, but waved condescendingly for me to continue.

But I found I couldn't. Why did even just one second of anything resembling a moment's truce or ease between us always end up in more anger and shouting?

Tears splashed into my soup.

Rosalie looked at me in confusion. "Why are you crying?" she asked.

Oh, besides the anger and shouting? I looked away from that image of perfection that couldn't make a proper PBJ but that I could never please and shook my head, making more tears spill out.

When I looked back across the table, she wasn't there any more.

She was standing right beside me, looking down at me as I now looked up into that beautiful, cruel, kind, indiscernible face.

She reached out with her hand, and a cold-rose-scented-marble finger captured a tear spilling down my cheek.

I stopped breathing as she brought her finger up to her face, examining it pensively.

_Oh, my God! Oh, my God!_ My dream from last night was happening for real right in front of my terrified eyes.

_This time,_ instead of wiping it away in disgust, as she had done this morning, she brought it to her lips.

I watched, transfixed by the terror of seeing my dream happen to me, as the tear disappeared into her sealed lips. I looked up into her coal-black eyes.

They weren't coal-black anymore, they were two scorching golden suns, just like in my dream, and the fire in them was blinding and overpowering.

"So sad!" she sighed. I could have said her words in exactly the way she said them for her. I could say her next words for her. She was going to tell me not to be sad. And then she was going take me to the bed, press down on me, bite my neck and suck out all my blood. My heart was beating a million times a minute.

I opened my mouth to stop her, to beg her to stop, to recall her to herself, but I was so scared out of my mind that no words came out.

She lifted me out of my chair with no effort at all, and my toes just barely touched the floor as my pleading eyes met her golden ones.

Her coal black eyes that I had been seeing exclusively of late were so beautiful, so perfect in their obsidian impenetrability, but they held nothing to the scorching clarity of these twin golden suns.

I was glad, in a way, that I knew this was the end: that these eyes would be the last thing I would ever see, for I couldn't imagine seeing anything more beautiful.

As Rosalie lifted me up my by arms glued now to my sides, my cheek must have brushed against her lips, because I saw the wetness on them from my tears disappear into her, as if she were absorbing _me_ through my tears.

"Ahhh!" she cried out, and her eyes burned hotter. And she held me at arms' length, and she said it.

"Don't be sad!" she sighed out.

_Oh, God!_ This was really happening. She _was_ going to take me to the bed and press herself on me, and I would cry out, begging her to take me, not being able to stop myself, and then she would take me, and I would die in her arms, feeling her suck my life right out of my neck. _Oh, God!_

I had to stop this before it happened. I had to.

"Rosalie!" I gasped out desperately, "please!"

She rotated so easily, as if I weighted less than a feather. My back was now facing that bed, and she took a step toward it, with me, captured in her arms.

"Please, Rosalie!" I begged. _"Please!"_

Something like reason returned to her perfect golden eyes, but there wasn't a trace that she recognized me at all.

"Hm." She paused in her march to what would be my death bed, and her eyebrows pulled together in a quizzical look. "I wonder ..."

I was gasping in shallow breaths of _her _as the tears fell, and I concentrated everything I could into saving myself.

But I could only repeat my plea: "Rosalie, please!"

Then delight lit up her face. "Ah! I know!" she seemed to be speaking entirely to herself. She seemed to be looking right through me.

Right where we were, she laid me down on the floor as if I were a sheet or a towel. Before I could open my mouth, she sat on me, and got this playful and wicked and terrifying smile on her face that I've never seen before.

"Tickle-tickle," her voice sang out happily.

"Wh-..." I began in confusion, but then I felt the touch of ten feather-light fingertips caress my stomach and sides.

I screamed in laughter and surprise and confusion. I couldn't help myself from squealing as Rosalie tickled me all over. It seemed she knew every ticklish bone in my body, and she beamed as she tickled me. I was laughing so hard that I could only draw gasping breaths to laugh more and convulsively under her exquisite attack. I tried to bat away her hands with my own, but that allowed her to grab both my wrists in one hand, lift up both arms and tickle me mercilessly on the insides and outsides of my arms and elbows and all the way into my armpits. I didn't know I had so many parts of my body, first of all, and I didn't know how each of them were so very and so differently ticklish, too. Her tickling went on and on and on, and she joined me with her own gay laughter at my own helpless laughing screams.

It just didn't stop ... I thought I would die laughing, but then, eventually, she slowed and then did stop the irresistible tickling, and the last gasps and spasms of laughter eased out of my lungs.

I felt like jelly: euphoric and weak. I looked up at her, and she smiled sweetly down at me.

_God!_ She was so, so _beautiful_ ... and I wasn't dead, as I had dreamed in my dream last night ... although it was really hard to draw each breath from my poor overworked lungs and tummy.

She looked down at me and reached out her hand very carefully to my face and collected a tear from my laughing fit. And I watched her, helpless again, not knowing what would happen next: we had departed so far from my dream. The tear disappeared into her sealed lips, and she sighed contentedly.

"There," she said happily, but then she became pensive, her eyes darkening ever so slightly. "But ... why are you still sad?"

I looked up at her, at perfection, at pure beauty.

There was nothing in me, her own words to the contrary, that she would ever see in me other than something to fix and then to forget. An ugly duckling, Bella 'Cygnet' Swan, to make a little bit less ugly. I thought this thought and despaired. _I love her so much,_ and my playfulness from before and my fighting with her, as much as I used them to hide this fact from myself, could not cover this truth. I love her, but she will never see anything in me. _Ever._

Two more sad tears joined my laughing ones.

Rosalie's eyes darkened further as she looked down at me in confusion.

But then I realized something.

This was not my dream. We were not in the bed, her legs were not between mine, but ...

She was sitting on my hips, anchoring me to the ground, and her hips pressed down on mine, not like the dream, but I felt the weight of her on me; I felt her joined to me. I felt _her. _I looked down from her darkening eyes to where her hips connected to mine and looked back up at her now coal black eyes.

Those eyes widened in shock. She was off me and had bolted to the door before I could even open my mouth to say what I had no idea what I would say.

Before I even knew it, I shouted: "Rosalie, stop! Wait!" as she put her hand to the latch to make her escape.

* * *

**Chapter end notes:**

Nathan Hale was an American Revolutionary. He was caught by the British and executed for treason (espionage). He is famous for being attributed with the line "I regret I have but one life to give for my country."

_Of course,_ it is improper to cool soup by blowing on it. One tilts the soup bowl away from oneself and exposes the soup at the bottom of the bowl to the air above the bowl by gently scooping tiny spoonfuls of soup in a very elegant milling motion. _Of course. ... And of course,_ one doesn't slurp one's soup. _Evah!_

I am grateful to my brother, the dad of marissasbunny(dot)com, for instructing me on the fine art of turning what I make (utter fail) into palatable chicken noodle soup.


	44. Sleep With Me

**Chapter summary:** Rosalie just has to stop opening up a little tiny bit and then shutting right down like this. She just has to stop running away. She has to. She just has to. She's only hurting herself when she does that. Well, more than just herself, but ...

* * *

"I..." Rosalie looked mortified. "I shouldn't have done that! I shouldn't have ... _God!"_ Then she whispered angrily: _"God damn my weak will! God damn me!"_

She turned back to the door and opened it quickly.

"Rosalie!" I shouted. "Where are you going!"

"I have to hunt ... I have to ..." she began desperately.

"... run away?" I finished for her.

"What?" She looked like a deer in a hunter's sights, ready to bolt, but rooted to the spot in fear.

"Rosalie, don't. You can't keep running away;" _well, actually, she can, but ..._ "you can run away from me, but you can't run away from yourself. You're only hurting yourself more by doing this."

"No, I have to hu-..." She was in total denial.

"... run away!" I shouted. "Don't, Rosalie." I commanded, then I pleaded: "Don't! For your own sake."

Her desperation faded, but then it became determined. Her nervous energy stilled, and she directed that now focused energy at me.

"Says the girl who runs away," she retorted.

"What?" I asked, sitting up, confused at the sudden inexplicable turn of the tables.

"Okay," she said, now angry. "Okay, I run away; _fine._ But by running away, I don't kill you. What do _you_ accomplish by running away?"

"Rosalie, I'm not running away anywhere, I'm right here." I answered as reasonably as I could.

She was so, so beautiful when she was angry like this (or when she smiles or when she did ... well, anything), but she really needed to start making sense. I shook my head as I used the table to pull myself up from the floor. I didn't quite trust my body to stay erect, so I kind of leaned against the table a little bit?

Rosalie examined weak-little me contemptuously, and fired off her next shot.

"Did you have something to tell me this morning, o brave little girl?" she asked coldly.

I looked away quickly. _Oh, yeah ... that. _Her shot felt like a direct hit.

"Running away, are we?" she was now relentless, turning from a trapped deer to the wolf pouncing at the deer's neck. I guess that made me the deer now.

I couldn't look at her.

She snorted dismissively at me. "Well, I'm going hunting now to keep you alive while you go run to hide from yourself some more." Then she added curtly: "Goodbye!"

"_KILL ME RIGHT NOW!"_ I hollered.

There was a pause, then Rosalie asked quietly: "What?" Her question was filled with a rage so powerful that I had to look right at her.

And I did, filled with my own fury: "I said, 'Kill me right now!'"

"You had better explain yourself," Rosalie commanded as she closed the door and crossed her arms.

"What did you just say as you were running away?" I demanded fiercely.

"I told you I would hunt while you would ..." she began just as hotly.

"What was the _last word you said!"_ I screamed.

She glared at me. "I said, 'goodbye.'"

"What does that word mean!" I demanded. But I saw that she knew what it meant.

"Goodbye," she said, "means 'God be with ye.'" But her crossed arms didn't give an inch off her anger.

"Yes!" I shouted. "'God be with me' because _you _won't anymore!" I said. "Just like when you ..." I swallowed hard as I waved at those cursed mirrors.

"I came back, girl," she said quietly now. "I came back. It doesn't mean that, it is just a salutation, that's all, it doesn't mean ..."

"Either it means something, or it doesn't." I said, beyond being placated. "You know that better than I do, _Rosalie Hale!"_

"I'm not going to do that to you," she said, ignoring my outpouring of anger, still trying to reason with me. "I won't ..."

"Then _don't!"_ I shouted. "Don't run away now, and don't you ever, _ever,_ say that word to me, ever again!"

She opened her mouth to say something.

But I cut in, still furious: "I want you to kill me before I hear that word from you! D'ya hear me?"

Rosalie dropped her arms, and looked at me so pityingly. "Are you so far gone as that?"

_Yes,_ I answered in my mind sorrowfully as my glare remained furious. I didn't even bother to think _'I love you.'_ I couldn't. I couldn't think what I didn't deserve. I couldn't think what would never be accepted nor returned to me.

She crossed the cabin to stand in front of me. She looked at me and then reached out toward my shoulders, but, in mid-gesture, thought better of it and dropped her arms to her sides.

"I'll stay, okay?" she looked into my furious eyes with her own now black, now concerned, eyes.

I reached out with my hands to her shoulders, grasped them and tried to give her a shake as I snarled: _"Good!"_

She was immovable, of course. Marble statue and all that ...

... whose shoulders I was holding.

I felt suddenly embarrassed at our proximity and at my touching her._ See, that's why she didn't touch me, _because she didn't want to give me the wrong impression. The impression that she had any feeling for me whatsoever. That's why she said 'I shouldn't have done that' and tried to run away after she tickled me. Because she was just tickling me, that's all, but she saw in my look that I thought it might me something else ... something more than that.

I dropped my hands and looked away.

Then the dam broke. I wailed as I burst into tears.

There I was, standing there, a crybaby, a complete idiot. No wonder why she couldn't stand being around me!

"Did you ..." she asked quietly through my keening "did you wish to finish your supper?"

Her voice was right next to me, but she was very much not touching me. I never felt so distant from her. I just stood there, shaking my head, eyes squeezed shut. I had enough difficulty now keeping the two or three spoons-full down. I couldn't imagine sitting down at the table to sit across from the image of _her_ and eat that soup _she_ made for me.

"Come on, now, come on; let's get you to bed," she said consolingly.

I collapsed. I didn't have strength anymore to hold myself erect. I was curled into a ball right back on that patch of floor where Rosalie had ... where we had ...

My wails now had a tinge of desperation, and I couldn't stop them from ripping out of my chest. The harder I tried, the harder they forced their way out.

Rosalie gently scooped my convulsing form from the floor. I felt a damp cloth on my face. I felt my teeth being brushed. I was so far gone that Rosalie brushed my teeth for me. Do you know how hard it is to brush somebody's teeth who is wracked by sobs? Apparently, not hard at all for Rosalie. Do I need to add that she did it gently, tenderly, and, although she would vehemently deny it, motherly? I felt myself being deposited on the bed. I felt my daytime clothes being exchanged for nighties. I felt Rosalie being very careful not to have her marbled skin touch mine.

Do you know how hard it is for somebody not to touch your skin when they change you out of blue jeans, your day-time panties and then have them put on your night-time panties before dressing you in pajamas? But Rosalie managed to do that somehow. The message was very clear: _I won't even accidentally touch your skin. _I felt the covers surrounding me.

"Stay with me," I pleaded through the aftershocks of my disintegration. She didn't want to be with me, I could just feel it in her distance, but I couldn't bear the thought of her leaving.

"I'm right here," a detached voice spoke from then now blackness of the utterly quiet cabin at chair height right by the bed.

"Sleep with me?" I asked and patted on top of the covers next to me on the side of the bed.

Silence.

"I mean, you say you don't sleep, but stay next to me?"

"No," came the quiet yet firm reply.

"Please?" I begged.

"Does your father sleep in your bed next to you?" Rosalie's question floated accusingly, calmly, detachedly in the darkness.

"When I was a little girl, sometimes I would crawl into bed with Pa, when I was alone or scared." Then I smiled at the memory. "He was a real snorer ... it was comforting, in a way, to listen to him sn-..."

"Are you a little girl still, then?" Rosalie's reasonable question interrupted my happy recollection.

"Yes," I answered. "Yes. I'm a little girl still. I'm scared, Rosalie, I'm lonely and so scared, and I need to feel you right beside me — I _need to know_ now and when I'm sleeping that I'm not alone — or I won't be able to sleep at all."

"I disagree," came the composed denial. "I think you are a big girl now. I think you are stronger than you allow yourself to think. I think you will be able to sleep. I think you do not need one more scary monster in your bed. I think you do not need _this_ scary monster hurting you anymore. I think you will sleep now."

"_Please, _Rosalie, please. I won't. I really won't. I won't be able to ..."

"I do not know how to convey to you my bewilderment that you turn to succor to the thing that is the positively worst thing for you. Why do you do this?" she asked.

"Because I don't have anything else," _but you. Because you are all I have. Because I lov-... _then I silenced that undeserved thought.

"Because I've taken all that away from you," she chided.

"I had nothing for you to take away," I answered sadly. _I have nothing. I am nothing._

Rosalie sighed. "No," she said decidedly, and my heart broke. "I will not lie next to you. I am right here. You can reach out and touch this chair and feel the weight of me on it and know that I am here."

I knew what she was really saying, however, and my chest ached, because my broken heart couldn't hurt any more than how it did now.

I reached out and grasped the chair leg ... and did not let it go.


	45. Quid Pro Quo

**Chapter summary:** I don't know what runs through her head, so I don't know what she'll ask, but I know it'll be insightful, even if it's so very far off. Then how will I answer? Will she see the truths beneath my lies? Like she always does? Can she see into my soul as she sees into the sanskrit? Why can she so easily penetrate my façade with those big doe eyes of hers when I can't even begin to fathom the well of her sadness?

* * *

The darkness and the silence didn't lull me to sleep. No, it pressed down on me. It only made things more unbearable.

"Rosalie ..." I began.

"Too much thinking," Rosalie's quick answer tried to stop me.

"Well, how do you stop thinking?" I demanded.

"I cannot, but you can: by sleeping," she answered wistfully. "That's the beauty of sleep. Everything is better after a sleep. But for me ... well, I do not sleep. I didn't appreciate it until I realized what I now miss. So, sleep now, and tomorrow will be ... well, tomorrow, we can start over ... that is, you can start over. Sleep allows you to start over. You can start over after you sleep: so sleep."

It was like a lullaby, her lilting words, and her ever so subtle purring.

But it wasn't working.

I held onto that chair with all my might.

"I can't sleep," I said after a moment.

"Closing your eyes will help," she answered.

"How can you tell that they're open?" I asked.

I felt her smile in the darkness answer me.

"Rosalie ..." I tried again.

"I will tell you a story now," she commanded.

She wouldn't let get in a phrase in edgewise, but I sure as shooting was getting this one in: _"Not _like last night's," I whispered fiercely.

"Hm. Are you going to tell the story for me then?" she asked quietly.

"No, but I want you to answer my question that you keep deflecting," I responded with my own demand.

"I have a question of my own for you," she countered, still quiet.

I considered. Would I be willing to trade answers? Yes. Yes, I would.

"That sounds fair," I answered. "I'll answer your question if you answer mine."

"There is no such thing as a fair _quid pro quo."_ Rosalie's voice was distant. "The term itself is absurd."

"I'd agree with you if I knew what you were saying; is 'quid pro quo' samscript, too?"

We were both being so quiet as we spoke. But I noticed in myself that it was easier for me now to say I didn't understand her; I didn't feel so bad about it, because it seemed that it wasn't a failing on my part if she used words I didn't understand or in ways I couldn't comprehend.

"I believe you mean to say 'sanskrit' ... the plosive does not include the 'p' sound. No, '_Quid pro quo'_ is from the Latin," Rosalie explained evenly. "It means 'This for that' or, in this case, 'your answer for mine.' I cannot measure the value of either to tell the fairness of the exchange, if such an exchange could ever be fair. I think in a _quid pro quo_ exchange both parties end up losing something, and how can that be fair?"

"How about this then, Rosalie," I answered after I thought about her words. "Why don't you ask me your question, and I'll answer it if I can, and then I'll ask my question, and you'll answer it if you feel like it? How about that?"

"I don't see how putting yourself entirely at my whim ... again ... is fair at all to you."

I smiled into the darkness. Rosalie didn't want me to feel bad that she so totally overwhelmed me? That she so totally outclassed me? But I kept these ironic thoughts to myself and responded instead with: "If I can ask my question after I answer yours without you deflecting me again, I'll've made more progress than I have so far tonight. That may not be fair, according to you, but that's good enough for me."

Rosalie thought for a bit in silence.

"Hm. All right then," she said, acquiescing. "My question is this. Why do you react so strongly to a certain word that I said when I was about to depart?"

"That was the last word I ever heard from my Ma when I was a little girl," I said.

Rosalie was quiet for a second, thinking. "When did she die?" she asked.

"She didn't," I responded evenly.

"Then how can you say that will be the last you will ever hear from her?" Rosalie asked.

"Well, besides the fact that _somebody_ says _I'm_ a dead girl," I started with a slight edge of a reminder of my situation. "There's just the way things are. Pa tells me about Ma like he's reading headlines from the newspaper. Facts about some movie starlet; you know, somebody I'd never dream of seeing or having a conversation with. Because I don't. Her letters to me? 'Rushed. Thanks for your note.' is what I usually get from her. Always so busy-busy-busy living her exciting life Back East. Besides, she married a man in his _early twenties, _and he's not even, you know, our kind, for crying out loud. _Mrs. Philip Dwyer._ What kind of name is 'Dwyer'? It sure ain't any kind of Dutch. And how do I say hello to the guy? 'Hi, Dad'? To a boy who's barely old enough to be an older brother?"

"But that's all pointless. When am I going to go Back East? Because she's made it plain that she's _not_ interested in coming out to nowhere Ekalaka to visit the nobodies she doesn't give a fig for: plain country folk like us from a nowhere town. That's what 'goodbye' means to me, it means I may as well be dead, for all she cares, 'cause she could care less."

I had never thought this. I had never worked out these feelings that I didn't know I had. I had just stayed on with Pa and took care of him. And he, God bless him, had never had one bad word to say about Ma, so I never dwelt on it.

"So when I say that word, it feels like your mother is leaving you all over again," she stated.

I thought about it. "I don't know," was my answer. Because I didn't know. I just knew that it killed me inside.

"Hm," was Rosalie's reply. She was distant again, lost in thought.

"Yeah," I added, thinking more on it. "But I was worse, wasn't I? I didn't even say goodbye to Pa. He didn't even get that from me. Just one morning I was gone. Disappeared. I didn't even get to say goodbye to Pa, and I won't, either, right? It's not like I can leave him a note. 'Dear Pa, kidnapped by a vampire, but I'm good. No worries.' I can't see that note going over well with anybody involved. So Pa has to live with never knowing what happened to me, and, as you pointed out, it's all my fault for being just too damn smart for my own good and just too damn stupid about it all: instead of keeping my big discovery to myself, I had to run right over and crow about it to you."

"What was I thinking?" I asked myself ruefully. "I'll tell you what I was thinking: nothing. As always." _Just like always, you stupid girl._ I heaped the hot coals of accusation on my own head.

"I actually see you as a person who is lost in her thoughts, not as a thoughtless person," said Rosalie, interrupting my self-reproach.

"Well, enough about me," I interjected, "now my question."

"Why is it wrong for your mother to marry somebody named 'Dwyer'?" Rosalie asked, not allowing me to move on.

"It's not wrong," I answered simply.

"You seem to think it is," she countered. "I though that was one of the reasons for this country existing, moving out of Old World thoughts of exclusivity to an homogenized society. I thought we weren't Germans or English or Irish or Italians or Poles. I thought we were Americans."

I noticed she left 'vampires' off the list.

"Look," I said, getting irritated. "She can marry whoever she wants to marry, that's not it ..."

"Then what is?" she asked annoyingly in that reasonable tone.

"That it's another fling of hers, another whim!" I answered angrily. "Just like Pa was. And then she's going to have another baby that she doesn't want again; just like me!"

"Look," I said. "She's not some teenager pining over a boy at a baseball game, that's supposed to be me, not her! She's too old for that now, but now she marries this kid trying to recapture her youth? Newsflash: it's not gonna come back, and when she gets unhappy in this arrangement, she'll move onto the next, leaving more broken things in her wake!"

"Do you do that?" Rosalie asked.

"No!" I shouted. _So much for me getting sleep. "I_ take care of Pa; I ..."

"No," Rosalie corrected me, "you said you were supposed to pine over boys at baseball games ... do you?"

I rolled my eyes in the darkness. "Oh, please!" I snorted.

"So when your mother ..." Rosalie began.

"Look," I shouted, "it's _my turn_ to ask the question! Can we please just drop this topic?"

Rosalie was quiet for a moment. "I think that depends on your question," she answered, not committing.

I took a few calming breaths. "So can I ask my question now?" I asked.

"I'm sure you are able, but, yes, you _may_ ask your question," Rosalie said quietly.

So much for the calming breaths, but I had to ignore her irritating way of correcting me, and focus here.

So I worked on not being irritated and focusing. The silence helped a bit, and counting to ten helped a bit, too.

"So," I said, more calmly now, "my question is this. So," I said, trying to think of a way to say it, "... when I said you could be Nathan Hale's mother, you got really offended. I thought age didn't matter to you anymore, so why did my asking about your age make you so angry? I mean I'm sorry, but I thought that it was something that didn't bother you."

"My age doesn't bother me," Rosalie answered slowly, "as I don't have one anymore."

"So why ...?" I began.

"I rather expected you'd be asking a very different question," Rosalie's voice was introspective. "But then I keep mistaking you for just any other person, even though I know you are not."

"What did you think I would ask?" I asked, curious, despite myself.

"I thought you would ask something about you," she answered. "Or I thought you would ask something about me that discomfits you. I didn't expect you to apologize for one little comment where you felt you hurt me, when the majority of the day is my unrelenting attack directed against how wrongly you see yourself."

"Well, the different there, Rosalie," I said in reply, "is that you think you're doing something to help me when you say those things, but I'm just mean when I say those kinds of things to you."

I remember particularly my snide comments about it being 'nice' that she gets to be bossy and my dig about her praying before she 'eats.' I'll have to make sure I watch that mean streak in me from now on, and when I feel it coming on, stop it, by, like, you know, sewing my mouth shut, or slamming my face into something, like the floor, or something less drastic than that ... like just eating the soup in silence: that way my mouth would be full of food and not questions or barbs that only hurt Rosalie, who is hurting enough as it is.

_Note to self: just eat the soup next time._

Rosalie laughed very quietly. "Like I said," she said, "you are unlike any person in the world."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"Seeing yourself as mean-spirited?" Rosalie stated with disbelief.

"Well, I am." I said defiantly.

"... And I'm kind?" she continued.

"Yes," I said firmly.

"Hm," Rosalie was being diplomatic, for a change. "This is an amazing thing, but it's not the only thing. You could have asked about my intent to murder you. Most people would be curious as to how or when this would occur ... most people would wonder _why me_ even with it already explained to them. Royce wondered that. Or, you could have asked after your name and how you will earn it. You could have continued your line of inquiry about prayer, like I expected, but no, you ask about how you think you hurt me, and you apologize for it."

Well, of course, but she did bring up some things that I have been wondering, so ...

"Can I ... oh, sorry," I quickly corrected my mistake, "that is, _may_ I ask about those things, too?"

"Yes, you may," she said. It even sounded kindly. "But let us entertain one question at a time, shall we? And the question you asked was about what you thought were my feelings about my age." She paused for a moment, then said, "Your question and apology were spot-on and completely wrong, ... as usual." She added the afterthought ruefully, then she said quietly, "It's not the mention of my age that upset me."

I waited for what did upset her, but the quiet in the darkness was all I got for an answer.

So I prompted her. "Something did, for sure. What was it?"

"You called me Nathan Hale's mother. I'm not. Earlier today, you called me your mother. I am not that, either." Her voice turned wistful. "And that's all I really wanted in my human life, to be a mother. I saw it so clearly, my children-to-be: two bright-eyed boys and a sweet and beautiful girl, and I would love them, and they would be so perfect, in every way."

"But, now, I cannot be anybody's mother." Her wistful tone turned to regret. "Not anymore. Not given what I am. Esmé was a mother to a little baby boy for a few days before he died, and that broke her heart, and she followed him in death that very day ... or would have followed him in death, if Carlisle hadn't see her as she ... well. But she did get to be a mother. She did get to hold her beloved child in her arms, but I ..." she broke off. "Now Esmé can't be a mother, although she pretends Edward and I are her children, and I cannot be a mother, either. Pretending most anything is distasteful for me; pretending that ... ? It would be ... anathema."

I took in her words.

"Wow!" I uttered in awe. How could you say _I'm sorry_ to that? How could you even begin?

Now I understood a little bit better her anger when we were walking along in the snow and at suppertime. So she didn't want to be my mother, but ... But she was always treating me like a little child, taking care of me as if I couldn't, talking down to me. If she didn't see herself as a mother to me, did she ... Did she see herself as a ... father to me? So austere, so strict, so harsh and demanding. Is that how her father was to her? Is that how she saw herself to me? Didn't she compare herself to Pa, too, when I asked her to lie in bed with me just now, too? And she was wearing a trench coat yesterday and today. There was nothing in Rosalie that gave any hint of mannishness. She called me 'beautiful' and 'graceful' but, really, that was her, by definition. But does she wish she were a man? Does she act that out by trying to be a solemn, austere father to me?

"Yes, 'wow!'" she quoted back to me easily, countering the turmoil of my thoughts.

"So it appears I couldn't drop the topic of motherhood," she continued, "like you requested. But it's a hard topic for me, too, and not just because of my dashed hopes."

She had mentioned something about hating her mother earlier. "Was it because of your mother?"

"My mother ..." she started quietly, but then changed topics. "I am related to Nathan Hale; did you know that? I'm some distant cousin or niece."

"I used to know the exact relation," she said distantly. "We had a family tree in our house. It was framed. And in one branch was 'Nathan Hale, June 6, 1755 – September 22, 1776, no issue' and in another branch was our family. My mother made me learn my exact relation to him ... I recall having to recite it over and over again until I stated it correctly, but I don't know what the words are anymore, being as they are lost in human memory. Mother was so proud to be related to him, an American Patriot, even if it was by marriage. She was so fiercely proud of that."

I couldn't see Rosalie, but I could tell she was lost in her reminiscence.

"So when she had me, her first born ..." Here Rosalie paused. "I imagine her look when she saw me and _my little slit_. 'Oh, hm, well, there it is,' I can just imagine the sound of disgust in her voice."

"Why?" I asked, shocked. I could imagine everybody having very strong feelings about Rosalie, like awe or admiration, but I couldn't believe those feelings would be of disgust.

"Isn't it obvious?" Rosalie asked. "It's because any children I would have would not carry the Hale name forward. She had that name and inherited that ancestry by marriage, but she cared about it so much more than her own family's that I never heard one word other than what it is to be a Hale." Rosalie paused thoughtfully in the darkness. "And there I was, her firstborn, and from the moment of my birth, I failed her in her greatest hopes. She didn't want a girl for a child. She wanted a boy who could _carry the Hale name forward,_" and then she added ruefully, "like I could not. I am my mother's greatest disappointment."

That last sentence she said so gravely; so quietly, but so resolutely, as if she knew, in her heart of hearts, the truth of that statement.

We were both quiet for a while after she confessed this to me; both lost in our thoughts, but then Rosalie asked, "Are you crying?" with a slight edge.

I couldn't trust my voice to answer the question she seemed to know the answer to.

After she waited for my answer, and after an answer didn't come — because I couldn't speak past the lump in my throat — she asked, in a confused voice that sounded lost, too: _"Why?"_

I wondered why she didn't read my mind for the answer.

"Because," I sniffled, "I feel terrible now, just terrible, for what I said to you."

"What did you say that you regret?" asked Rosalie quietly.

_What did I say that I _don't _regret?_ That really was the question, but I guess I had better explain myself to her. I owed her that much.

"I said," I whispered, swallowing past the lump, "I said that you always tell everybody what to do; that you always get your way."

"But that's true," Rosalie replied evenly. "There's no need to regret speaking the truth."

_Except when it hurts somebody, _I corrected her mentally, _and you say the truth always hurts._

"No, it's not, Rosalie," I corrected her. "It's not true for the most important thing for you."

"Hm. That's true, also," she acknowledged. "But why dwell on things that can no longer be? Why live with regrets?"

And she added an easy and dismissive, "La!" as if that made everything go away. As if it made it all okay.

"Do you?" I challenged.

"Do I what?" she asked, as if she didn't know what my question meant, but it was asked too lightly. I knew she was pretending.

"Do you live with regrets?" I wouldn't let it go.

"Li-..." she started, and then she sighed. "My dear girl," she began again, "one must be alive to be able to live with regrets."

"You _know_ what I mean!" I retorted fiercely.

"Yes, I know what you mean," she replied solemnly.

After a moment, I didn't think she would answer. I guess the silence was my answer. I guess I knew the answer, but then she whispered so quietly I could barely hear her one word.

"Always," she said.

The way she said it ... now I felt it. In that one word, I felt the hopelessness in her. It felt like forever, and that forever was bleak. I felt it touch my soul, and I mourned for her and her lost humanity.

"I'm sorry," I said finally, fresh tears wetting my cheeks and my pillow.

I felt the cover right next to my arm tighten a bit under weight, and I felt Rosalie's fingertips, cool, even with a separating blanket, just barely touch my arm.

"_Thank you,"_ she whispered sincerely.

And weight of her hand went away, but the feel of the touch of her fingertips lingered on my arm — cool and electric, but at the same time warm and tingling.

We seemed, both of us, to be lost in her own thoughts. But it wasn't an uncomfortable silence ... not as if I could tell what was going through Rosalie's mind now.

Not as if I ever could.


	46. Heaven and Hell

**Chapter Summary:** Because Rosalie wants me to go _where?

* * *

_

After a moment's silence, my quiet "Rosalie ..." seemed so loud in the cabin.

"Yes?" she asked patiently.

"No," I said blushing in the darkness, "never mind."

"I'm letting you ask," Rosalie replied.

But I shook my head. "I'm being selfish: I shouldn't be prying; I'm sorry."

"I think that I, better than you, can determine if you are prying. Besides, when will you ever have this opportunity again?" Then she added sadly, "Now is all we have."

"Uh, okay," then I asked quietly: _"Do_ you pray?"

Rosalie was quiet for a moment, so I felt my fear was justified: I _was_ prying. But then Rosalie did speak.

"I don't think I ever did as a human ... I never saw the point: A Hale makes her own way. Who needs God's help? Weak people, or so I always thought. I've only prayed as a vampire. Funny, isn't it, finding the need to pray when one is cursed creature for all eternity?" she asked, but her rueful voice didn't sound she found any humor in it.

"What do you pray about?" Then I instantly regretted my question. _What did I just say to myself about prying?_

"I've prayed twice in this existence so far," Rosalie answered quietly. "Once to my father, and once to God."

"You prayed to your father?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes, when I held him in my arms after he died," Rosalie responded factually.

"Oh," was all I could say. _Did she kill her own father?_ I couldn't match the image of Rosalie killing her own father — was she not able to stop herself from draining him dry when she first became a vampire? — and Rosalie now.

"What did you pray to your father?" I asked eventually. Did she pray that he would forgive her? I wondered if her relationship was better with her father than with her mother. I wondered if she went back to him to say goodbye, just like I wanted to, but then she couldn't stop herself from killing him.

It was quiet in the cabin for a moment. And then Rosalie said, "I'm sure you've seen that we Hales are proud people."

I bit my lip. The smile still tried to plaster itself on my face.

"We Hales are proud people," Rosalie said again. "And when, as I kept watch over my father in the months following my death, as he looked desperately for a reason for it, and then realizing that it was my own fiancé that was the cause, it just killed him. And that's when I realized that he loved me. I found out, after my own death, and after his, that my father loved me."

My smiled evaporated as I gasped.

Rosalie continued, still distant: "And I could just see him going right up to God and telling God that if his own daughter wasn't in Heaven, then Heaven wasn't fit for a Hale. I could just see my father damning himself to Hell in his own Hale pride."

"So I prayed to him," Rosalie's focus seemed to returned to the here and now. "I prayed that he would just let go of his Hale pride, would just let go of me, and be happy in Heaven. That's what I prayed to my father."

It was quiet for a moment.

"Of course," Rosalie continued, "I didn't cry then. I couldn't any more, so the thought didn't even occur to me, so it is endearing that you cry for me now."

I suppose I should have noticed that the tears started falling again by the end of her story. I ruminated that it's a rather sad statement that I don't even notice that I cry anymore, that it has to be pointed out to me. I never in my life cried so much since when the Hales came, since Rosalie took me away and started telling me about how terrible she is(n't) and how good I am(n't).

I sniffled. "You wouldn't be saying that if you know what I was thinking."

"What were you thinking?"_ Of course _she would ask.

"No way." I said firmly, discreetly wiping my tears on the pillow. "If I tell you, you ... Rosalie, you don't need anything more in your, you know, your life. You don't need this. You'd hate me if I told you."

"That's a rather difficult scenario to imagine; try me," she answered calmly. "Tell me, for I'd really like to know what you are thinking, as I never do know ... and your thoughts are always a surprise. Sometimes they are even entertaining."

I could hear the smile in her voice, but she wouldn't smiling when I told her this.

"No," I said firmly.

"I'd feel bad if you don't tell me," she chided.

_Hey, now._ I thought I was supposed to be able to push her around with her Hale pride. She's not allowed to do that to me, forcing me to say it by making me feel bad about making her feel bad.

"Rosalie ..." I pleaded.

"Tell me," she answered, pleading right back. "Please," she begged.

Rosalie _begged_. Who could gainsay that? I could just imagine those impenetrable black eyes growing large and innocent and lost.

_God damn it all!_

Here she was, getting her way again, as always. I wonder why that didn't work on Edward. They were supposed to be ... you know ... together. Maybe she didn't like him enough to bat her eyelashes at him entreatingly?

"Okay, but you're going to hate me, I just know it." I swallowed and pressed on. "I thought you went back to say goodbye to your Pa after you became what you are now, and I thought that you killed him because you couldn't stop yourself from ... you know."

It was quiet.

"See," I sighed. "I told you that you would hate me."

"No, it's not that," Rosalie voice was assuring. "I'm just surprised at how correctly you thoughts are in this case."

"But I thought you said you didn't kill him!" I was confused.

"But I did," she countered: "I died and broke his heart. That, and the shameful way I died, killed him." Then she finished sadly: "I killed my own father."

"No!" I said. I couldn't believe what she just said. She blamed herself for what was done to her? But she still didn't get what I was saying to her. "I meant that I thought that you did the, you know," and here I whispered, _"the vampire thing"_ I paused for a fraction of a second, listening for a tirade for saying the 'V' word. It didn't come, so I pressed on, "to your father, and you couldn't stop yourself."

"No, I didn't do that, but that, too, is a very reasonable thought," Rosalie answered quietly. "For, after all, most all vampires are uncontrollable as newborns, and what does one fall back to when out of one's element? The familiar. Most newborns run right back to mommy and daddy for help or consolation. But what happens when they smell the blood? Most newborns' first victims are their own families."

"But you didn't." My statement was a statement, but I was also just making sure.

"I was very ... _fortunate,"_ I could hear Rosalie's grimace, "in that the Cullens take their responsibilities very seriously, unlike others. They kept a very watchful eye over me this past year. Not as if they needed to." Her last statement had a tinge of annoyance.

I guess she didn't like being bossed around all that much.

Hm. I wonder if I could mention that other people, like, you know, somebody she just happens to be talking to right now, doesn't like that all that much, either.

Another conversation for another time, because I just couldn't get over what Rosalie had told me about herself.

"How do you do it?" I asked her.

"I am a Hale," she replied pompously. "What I decide to do, I do. What I decide to avoid, I do not do." She was silent for a moment. I could just see her looking so smug, but then she added: "Holding my breath until after I became acclimatized to the shocking pull of it helped, too."

"No, Rosalie, I'm not talking about that ..."_ Miss I'm-a-Hale_ "I meant, all that, you know? All that happening to you, you know? The way you died, right? By those ... people? And then you're this? And then you can't have a baby?" Not that I've ever given that any thought, but apparently Rosalie has. "And your father dying of a broken heart?" I wiped my eyes. "All this just keeps happening to you, and you just keep ... going on? How do you do it?"

"I do it by being," Rosalie answered simply. "It is what I am now. I cannot cease. I cannot stop. I go on. I just go on and on and on."

Rosalie was quiet again, but then added. "As you said, it must be _nice_ being a vampire. Who could not want _this?"_

"Rosalie," I pleaded, hurt by her sting, "I'm so sorry I said that ... I just didn't know."

"You did," Rosalie replied. "You did know. Deep down, you already knew, yet you still said it. I've hurt you this much. That even though you knew it would be small to say, you said it, because you do see what I am."

"No, Rosalie," I said angrily, "no. You're not like that. You were right, I was just being mean; _that's all."_

"Li-..." and Rosalie sighed but continued, "I _am_ like th-..."

"And why do you keep doing that to yourself?" I demanded. "Just stop stopping yourself, please? Huh? For me, okay? I don't care what you call me anymore, all right? But this whatever game you're playing is only hurting yourself."

"You must earn your name for me to call you by it." Rosalie was firm.

Well, I could be firm, too.

"Well, okay, then. I'll earn it, then. What do I need to do? Do I have to stand in front of the mirrors for, like — what? — fifteen hours or something? I'll do that." Yes, I'd do that for her. I could barely handle three seconds for myself, but I'd do it so that she'd stop beating herself up.

"That's part of it," Rosalie answered.

"Fifteen hours?" I squeaked. Now I wasn't so sure I could do that ...

"No," her voice smiled at me, "but you do have to pay your bet, you know: seven seconds. I remember what I'm owed, and I do demand payment in full."

Seven seconds. Impossible a few nights ago, but that sounded a lot better than fifteen hours.

"Is that all? Do I have to do anything else?" I asked.

"Yes, there's more, but we'll talk about it tomorrow," Rosalie said dismissively.

"You promise?" I demanded ... then _whoops!_ I'm not supposed to say that: "I meant, will you really ..."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," Rosalie said, but I could hear she was displeased.

"Do I have to say that I'm beautiful and graceful?" I asked quietly and quickly, not letting it go.

"Do you see yourself in that way?" Rosalie asked right back, accusingly.

I was silent. How do I tell her _no_ without the whole lecture from her?

"You do know that you are those things," she said.

I sighed.

"... but you don't see yourself that way," Rosalie added quietly. I heard regret in her voice.

I shook my head _no_ on my pillow, not daring to speak.

Now it was Rosalie's turn to sigh.

"Then you don't need to say that, if you don't believe that." It sounded like she was caving in. "If you did say that then you would believe that you were lying, and I don't want you to lie. _Ever."_

"Why?" I asked her.

"Because I want you to go to Heaven," she answered evenly.

"You _what?"_ She must have been ...

I must have heard her wrong.

"Because I want you to go to Heaven," she answered in the exact same voice; totally unperturbed by my outburst.

I had to remember to close my mouth. _"Why?"_ I gasped.

"I am a selfish creature," Rosalie admitted, her voice filled with something like regret. "I have never done anything for anyone other than myself. I am selfish now. Even now. Remember when I told you that I can only hope through you? Do you know what hope is?"

But Rosalie didn't wait for my answer. Not that I had an amazing one to share with her.

"Hope is the desire for happiness, and true happiness can only be found in Heaven. Heaven's gate is forever closed to me now: I cannot hope ... for myself. But I can ... for you. If you get to Heaven, it will be the one good thing that I will have ever done. And I want that; I want that one good thing for myself. I _so_ want that."

Rosalie whispered: "I am selfish for that one good thing, the only good thing I will have ever done, that is why I want you in Heaven."

I couldn't get over it: Rosalie was saying she was being selfish by wanting to do good by me? It just didn't make sense. There had to be more to what she was telling me.

As always.

"You asked me if I prayed," Rosalie continued, "and I told you I've prayed twice. I will pray one more time, again to God, and I will ask him, _very politely,"_ she added fiercely, "to take you into Heaven. I will pray that ... when I murder you."

"When is that?" I asked her timidly.

I heard a whisper of cloth. Rosalie must have shrugged.

"Why is that?" I asked her, timidly, again.

"Why the delay?" Rosalie clarified.

"That, too, but I meant why are you doing this? I mean ... you know ..." Actually, I didn't know what I meant by that.

"Do you hear that sound?" Rosalie asked darkly.

"Rosalie! I'm sorry, all right? I didn't know 'you know' was on the list, okay?" _Jeez! _She's always such a stickler. I wonder how many words were on the "list." I wonder if I'll be able to say anything at all eventually without being corrected.

"No, not that. _Listen."_ Rosalie commanded impatiently.

I listened. Then I sighed.

"I" _still_ "don't hear anything," I whined.

"Nor do I," Rosalie answered, "But when I do, it will be _them,_ and that's why I must kill you, before _they_ get to you."

A chill went down my spine.

I don't know why I started asking questions, or why Rosalie thought that answering them would help me sleep.

"They?" I asked timidly, regretting my insatiable curiosity and dreading the forthcoming answer.

"You told me about how the police run your cities here, no? We have our Rule, so we also have our own 'police.' _Them._ The Volturi. But your stories ... ? Your terrible and corrupt police? Their methods are sweet little cherubic children's games as compared to how the Volturi enforce the Rule. If they were to come across you in your idyllic little town with your idyllic townsfolk knowing what you know ... ?"

I felt, in the silence, Rosalie thinking of what would be happening in Ekalaka.

"They wouldn't kill you for a very long time," she said, and added regretfully: "but you would be wishing they would, every second of every day they prolonged your life. They would torture every name you knew out of you, and kill them in front of you, then they would torture names that you would make up, trading names for some respite, but they would find those people and kill those innocents in front of you, knowing full well their ignorance, but punishing you with their deaths, just out of spite. And then they would make you curse God and this life. That's when they would kill you, finally, when they had drained from you every last drop of hope or joy or consolation, and you would welcome Hell to the unrelenting tortures of the Volturi. And that's _why_ it's me that will be your killer: because if the Volturi come to enforce the Rule, it wouldn't be just you, it wouldn't be just the local townspeople, it wouldn't be just the Cullens as well, ... and your death, perhaps everyone's death, would be agonizing: it would come slowly and painfully."

"It may be no consolation for you," she continued, "but at least with me, your death will not be like that, and others will not suffer because of your insights."

"How will you ... do it?" I ask hesitantly.

"Do you really wish to know?" Rosalie asked quietly.

I thought about it. I wasn't sure if I _wanted _to know, but I was sure I needed to tell her ... _oh, something, and don_'_t read my mind right now, Rosalie _... and I needed to know so I could tell her first.

"Yes," I finally answered.

"Then I will show you tomorrow," she said.

"Putting off all this stuff until tomorrow!" I complained.

"Because you need to sleep now!" Her fierceness was directed toward me now.

"Well, I'm not done asking my question!" I gave her fierce right back.

"_Questions!_" Rosalie retorted. "And, yes, you are ... for tonight at any rate," she finished more quietly.

"For somebody Hell-bent on murdering me, you sure fuss over me a whole lot ... " _like a mother or something_ "why is that?"

Rosalie was silent. The silence was petulant.

"Besides," I pouted, "you didn't tell me what you prayed to God the first time."

"Doesn't matter," was the clipped reply, "God answered that prayer, and His answer was a big, fat 'no,' so the supplication is now irrelevant."

I was miffed, but Rosalie sounded miffed, too. It's just no fair, her getting angry at me being angry.

But I wondered what Rosalie would want so badly that she would pray to God about it. I instantly knew I couldn't ask that question. Rosalie had become closed off again. I guess the free exchange we had enjoyed in this moment was now gone.

"Fine," I muttered darkly, spitting mad.

She probably prayed that I would've died from natural causes so she wouldn't have more blood on her hands and not have to spend day and night dealing with a stupid, needy girl.

"Fine," Rosalie answered coolly.

I turned away from the sound of her voice and curled up into a ball under the covers. _Typical,_ I thought darkly. I think we are getting somewhere ... I think we can finally talk ... and then she gets all _Rosalie._

Why does Rosalie always have to be so _Rosalie_ about everything?


	47. What Does the 'H' Stand For?

**Chapter summary:** So God's Name is like this big deal. So what. I still don't see why that gives Rosalie the right to whack me for saying the 'J' word. AND I bet she has no idea what the 'H' stands for. I'd ask her, to show her up, but then she's probably just whack me again.

* * *

I stayed wrapped up in myself, thinking about that mean vampire sitting so coolly by the side of the bed who wouldn't tell me what she prayed about.

"What's with the whole God-thing, anyway?" I demanded from my fœtal position.

"What do you mean?" Rosalie asked, still cool.

I unwrapped myself and turned my body in the bed toward her voice.

"All the sudden, you're reading the Bible and you're praying now, and you whack me on the back of the head just for saying the ... you know ..." _Oops!_ Am I not allowed to say 'you know' anymore? I've lost track. "... the 'J' word. What's that all about?"

"I did not 'whack' you," Rosalie corrected.

"You _whacked_ me, Rosalie," I retorted angrily.

"If I had, as you said, _whacked_ your head," Rosalie hissed, "we wouldn't be having this argument, because you wouldn't have a head or even have that pretty little mouth to argue from."

"You _whacked _me, Rosalie," I stated sullenly, not giving an inch.

Rosalie sighed.

"So, why did you whack me?" I demanded.

"I _didn't wha-..." _Rosalie began angrily.

"Whatever. So, why?" I interrupted.

Rosalie gave me the silent treatment.

"Okay!" I can't believe I caved here. God! I'm such a pollyanna! "All right! So you didn't whack me, okay? So, but, why did you bow my head? I mean, what's the big deal? I said the 'J' word; everybody says it!"

"You aren't 'everybody'!" Rosalie was still angry.

"Because I'm a nobody?" I whispered.

_"No!"_ Rosalie growled. _"When_ are you going to see your virtues and innate beauty! You aren't everybody, because you are unlike every other person. You're not nobody, no: there is nobody like you."

"There you go again, Rosalie." I just couldn't believe how far off she was. "When are you going to leave off this kick?"

"When you start seeing yourself as you are," Rosalie responded resolutely.

_Whatever,_ I thought, but continued: "That still doesn't explain the wha-... um, that is, the whole head-bowing thing."

"Do you know your Decalogue?" Rosalie asked.

"Can we please just say on topic, just this once?" I begged.

"But I am staying on topic!" she insisted.

I couldn't stand it any more. "No, Rosalie, I say the 'J' word and you react like that; I want you to explain that, please, and not change topics and talk about the deca-something."

"Oh, dear me!" Rosalie sighed then explained: "The Decalogue is the Ten Commandments, and one of the commandments is not to take the Lord's name in vain. You did know that, didn't you?"

"I guess so ..." I said. I knew, at least, that you weren't supposed to say 'God damn it' or whatever, although everybody does. But I didn't know the Ten Commandments were called the Decalogue, but it wasn't as if my life depended on knowing that, right?

"So what is the Lord's name?" Rosalie asked me.

"God, right?" I guessed.

"No, that's what God is, that is not His Name." Rosalie answered.

"Are you going to whack me if I say the 'J' word?" I asked back.

"Li-..." Rosalie began, then stopped, and hummed angrily at her mistake for a moment.

Maybe if I really ticked her off, she'd drop that name she's thinking of for me, and the game would be up, and she'd just call me that and quit torturing herself with these fits and starts.

Rosalie resumed after a while. "Were the Ten Commandments written before or after the Incarnation?"

I just shook my head. "Rosalie, the only thing I can say to that is 'um.' But I know you don't like that, so can you ... I mean ... _would_ you please explain it in a way that I can understand?"

"I will try," Rosalie said. "May I tell you a history?"

"Okay ..." I answered cautiously. _Rosalie and her stories, _I thought ruefully.

"The Decalogue was written, historically, centuries before God walked among His creation in His Incarnate Form ..." Rosalie began.

"Rosalie," I interrupted. "I asked you to explain it so that I could understand it, okay?"

Rosalie sighed, and stopped for a moment, collecting her thoughts.

"Let me get the Bible and read it to you, then," Rosalie said.

"Oh, God!" I sighed with exasperation.

"Just ... just bear with me, here." Rosalie said impatiently, then scolded: "You did ask me to explain."

I think I was going to regret asking.

I felt Rosalie get up from the chair, then come right back. I heard her flipping through a bunch of pages.

"Don't you need some light or something to read that?" I asked. I couldn't see her at all in the darkness.

"No," came the answer and the pages continued to flip.

"You can see in the dark?" I asked.

"Ah, here it is," was Rosalie's answer. I guess she could see in the dark. I'd have to add that to my list. What number would that be again? Number twenty-two, right? 'Rosalie being able to see perfectly fine in pitch black darkness.'

"Let me read this passage from Exodus to you," Rosalie said, and she read it.

It had something to do with Moses parting the Red Sea when the Jews were escaping from Egypt. But the way Rosalie read it, with her lilting, musical voice? It was beautiful and heart-breaking and captivating. It reminded me of when Edward read me those sonnets forever and a day ago: it could have been anything, but because she was reading it, it was everything, and I was a little bit sad when she stopped.

"I remember that story," I told her when she finished. That, and Samson and Delilah, and some other stories, I guess, were the ones I remembered from what I picked up here and there from our irregular church visits.

"Do you know that story is actually an encoding of the Name of God?" Rosalie asked.

"Um, no? How can that story be God's name?" I asked.

"Nobody, today, knows exactly." Rosalie answered quietly. "What we do know, that in the ancient Hebrew, there were two hundred sixteen letters in this passage, and when arranged and said a certain way, gave the Name of God. And that Name was so sacred that the High Priest for all Israel was the only person allowed to say it, once a year, inside the most sacred part of the temple, where only he could go. He even had to be tethered to a rope, so that if were struck dead uttering the Name, he could be pulled out without others adding their dead bodies when God struck them down when they trespassed to collect the priest. That is the power of God's Name: it was so powerful, that when the Jews recited it, they conquered and ruled their lands, and prosperity and power was theirs, and when they profaned it, they were struck dead and their temple was destroyed. And since that destruction, even onto now, two thousand years later, the Name has been lost to us."

"Why? Why doesn't somebody just arrange those letters and say it?" I asked. It didn't sound all that hard.

"It's not that simple," Rosalie answered.

"Why not?" I didn't see the problem.

"Oh, don't think people aren't trying. In fact, the Volturi have existed even as far back as the last time God's Name was recited. I wouldn't put it past them to be working on it right now."

Rosalie was quiet, thinking about the other 'V' group. I now had two sets of 'V's: 'vampires' and 'Volturi.' Why couldn't they be called something else? Maybe vampires like words starting with 'V'?

"The must be pretty dumb not to get two hundred letters right after two thousand years ..." I said. I bet it would take me, like, what? a week to get it right if I were given the assignment.

"No," Rosalie answered quietly, "they have ruled for all this time; they are not dumb. And it would be well for you not to underestimate them." She added ruefully: "I don't."

"I still don't see the problem," I said.

"Well, let's take a much smaller but similar problem. If I told you 'Yahweh' and 'Jehovah' were only two of the ways to pronounce the same four-letter Hebrew word, do you start to see the issue? So how do you know you have the correct one when you pronounced it? And that's just four letters? So if we keep increasing the length of the word? And ... well, I can see your mathematical foundation isn't very strong, ..."

"Oh, don't sugar-coat it, Rosalie," I butted in, still smarting from all the red I saw on the algebra exercises I worked on.

I could feel Rosalie's condescending smile in the darkness. "Well, let me just say that the problem gets at least twice as hard with each new letter you add."

"So ... ?" I asked, still not seeing the problem.

"My dear girl," Rosalie sighed. "You take a penny at the beginning of the month and double your sum every day and at the end of the month you walk away a millionaire."

"Even this month?" I quipped. Then I clarified, "It is still February, right?"

"Yes, even this month." Rosalie answered quietly.

She didn't tell me if it was still February, however.

"Wow!" I said. Then I smiled: "Do you have a spare penny on you?"

Rosalie was quiet.

_Jeez!_ Talk about Miss Sensitive over there.

"Well," I groused, "I see what you mean."

She reengaged: "And that's only thirty or so doubles, so maybe you can see the difficulty when there are more than two hundred doubles? It would take more than ... hm, carry the four ... approximately two to the sixtieth years to exhaust all possibilities if you were to recite a simple bifurcated variation of the name every minute."

"English, please, Rosalie." I begged.

"... with no meal nor outhouse breaks, either." Rosalie finished, and I heard the smile in her explanation.

"Oh," I said humbly. "So, I guess it must be pretty hard, then."

"Yes, it would be 'pretty hard' to know the Name of God, if it weren't for the Incarnation," Rosalie agreed.

Was she talking about flowers? She just said something about carnations, didn't she? I felt like asking her, but her mood soured when I was being flip about the money thing. I kept quiet.

"Now, everyone knows the Name of God in the Second Person, that is, the Son, and anyone can say it ..." Rosalie began.

"But people don't drop dead for saying 'Jesus Christ,' Rosalie," Here I bowed my head quickly, just to be sure that no whacks were forthcoming, regardless of what Rosalie called them. "I see it all over the place," I said reasonably. "People say it all the time, and they don't drop dead."

"Yes, they do," Rosalie responded uncompromisingly.

So much for me trying to be reasonable.

"Um, no, Rosalie, you're wrong: they don't." I couldn't let this one pass. She was wrong.

"They may not 'die' bodily, but they are taking the Lord's Name in vain, so they most assuredly will die for that." was the calm reply.

"Well, _everybody _dies, Rosalie!" It was just pure frustration talking with her sometimes. Like ...

Hm ... actually, when wasn't it frustrating talking with her?

"But not everyone gets to Heaven," Rosalie answered right back.

"Well, then, it must be a pretty empty place! Who in the world could get to Heaven with those kinds of rules?" I demanded. My understand of the big Mr. 'J'-man was that he was a swell; a really nice guy. Didn't sound like it from Miss By-the-(Good)-Book, however.

_"You."_ Rosalie answered severely. "And _I_ am going to make sure of it."

"'Cause your my guardian angel or something?" I demanded hotly.

"Or something," Rosalie answered just as hotly.

"Okay, wow! My own guardian vampire, then!" This was just around the bend. "Well, I tell you what, you can't force me to be a Miss Goodie-Two-Shoes, ya hear me?"

"That's right!" But it didn't sound like she agreed with me. "I can't force you to be what you intrinsically are, but I can make sure you stay that way!"

"Is that how you see me? Oh, Jesus Christ alrea-... _Hey!"_

Rosalie had reached out with both hands and very gently tilted my head down and forward at my outburst.

"Rosalie, this is ridiculous! Are you going to make me bow every single time I say that?"

"Yes," came the absolute reply.

"Oh, brother!" I fumed.

_Note to self:_ don't say the J-word around Rosalie Bible-Thumping Hale over there.

I'd add that to my set of rules in my journal — _d'ya hear me there, Miss Nosey? __my__ journal!_ — but for the reaction of certain vampires to certain things I write in _my_ journal.

Rosalie's voice then turned pensive. "'Jesus Christ' is even really correct, though, is it?"

I could just hear her head bob when she said the name. Well, okay, I couldn't hear it, but I could just imagine her head doing that in the darkness.

"For, after all," she continued her thought, "'The Christ' is His title, so it's more correctly 'Jesus, the Christ.'" I imagined her bow again. This would get old. No, this was already past old into ancient. But then she chuckled. "Sort of along the lines of 'Winnie-_ther_-Pooh.'"

I was sulking, but my curiosity got the better of me. I wondered if she knew this. I wondered if she knew how to force her way on me, but then make me come out of my sulk with a tidbit I just _had_ to investigate.

_Damn, she's good!_ I thought admiringly; hating myself for my awe of her.

"'Winny-ther-'who?" I asked. I didn't know anybody of that name. Maybe she was a famous Jazz singer Back East that backward Ekalaka hadn't yet heard of? We had heard of that new singer in New York, Billie Holiday, but she was taking the world by storm, so that really was no big thing, us, even backwater us, knowing her.

"Do not tell me you haven't been read the _House at Pooh Corner_ books as a child," she sounded shocked.

"House at what?" I asked confused, but then Rosalie tsked in disappointment. "Okay, Rosalie, I won't tell you that, but ... well, as you may have guessed, my Ma wasn't one to read me bedtime stories."

"Well, then, we must correct that, mustn't we?" It didn't sound like a question.

"As long as those bedtime stories aren't anything like last night's!" I pouted in reply. Making me cry, burning the sheets, and all for what?

"Well, they can convey lessons ..." Rosalie began, and I thought, _oh, no!_ "... but I'd say they are rather sweet and delightful stories, and I think you would agree with me on this particular point."

"Wow! The two of us agreeing on something! Imagine that!" I couldn't: she'd have to start making sense for me to even think about agreeing with her. "I'd like to read'm just to see if that would happen!"

"Hm, yes," came Rosalie's lost voice. "Imagine that."

It was quiet for a moment with Rosalie lost in her thoughts.

Suddenly, the grasp I had on the chair leg pulled it toward me, as it no longer had any weight on it.

Rosalie was leaving me, and I had no idea why.

* * *

**Chapter end notes:**

The Shemhamphorasch, the "Name of God," (שם המפורש), is encoded in Exodus 14:19-21.


	48. A Bottle of Scotch

**Chapter Summary:** Wow! That voice in the forest _did_ lie to me; my dreams _can_ be wrong about somethings. I wonder what else I'm wrong about. Well, that is ... besides everything ...

**Warning:** This chapter contains forceful use of profanity and references to and implications of violence.

* * *

"Rosalie," I cried out in shock, "where are you going?"

"I'm going to get you a cup of water; you haven't drunk anything in a while, and you've been cr-... well, now you are dehydrated." Her voice floated to me from over by the stove.

"Rosalie, I don't need to drink water now," I called out.

"Mmmhmm," came the dismissive reply.

I heard the door open then close. I felt the cold from the outside steal its way in. Rosalie was ignoring me, and now she was gone.

I heard, to my extreme relief, the door open and close again; she had come back.

Rosalie must have also decided to stoke the fire in the stove, because I heard the sounds of the stove door being opened, and I saw flickers of outlines of her putting wood into the fire.

The chair scraped across the floor and pulled my hand away from me. Rosalie's cool grasp stung my hand, her fingers unwrapping mine from the chair leg and put a cup into my hand.

"You do know what happens when I drink a full cup of water just before I go to sleep, don't you? Right?" Then I added: "I really don't think this is a good idea."

"I'll make sure you are in the outhouse before any accident occurs," Rosalie responded coolly.

"Like last time?" I reminded her. I vividly recalled waking up from my dream where I was peeing to find myself being rushed to the outhouse, ... but too late. I also recalled the horrifying result of that race when I soiled everything, including Rosalie's hand as she stripped me of my clothes. I couldn't imagine anything more mortifying than that (well, besides my dream last night where she lectured about my very embarrassing dream of Rosalie _taking_ me on my bed) ... unless it was me doing it again tonight. _Nothing_ could be worse than that.

"I was rather ... distracted ... the last time. That won't happen tonight." Her assurance wasn't much help: Rosalie sounded _'rather distracted'_ now.

What did I say about hitting bottom, and then falling through the bottom? Once again, if I could have looked into the future, then I really should have listened to my own warning and the warning in Rosalie's distracted voice. But would have done any good if I had listened? What was the point of being right about these kinds of things if that didn't help any?

But I'm getting _way_ ahead of myself now, aren't I?

But then I started drinking the water anyway. I realized that she would have to stay here and would have to watch me if I drank the water, so I did as she ordered without further protest. I was rather glad that I did obey her, the water tasted amazingly sweet as I drank it: cool and refreshing. I hadn't realized how thirsty I actually was.

"You mentioned something about animals saying how they tasted to me," Rosalie said quietly as I drank. "What did they say?"

I took another sip of water. "Well, Dolly ..." I began.

"Your horse?" Rosalie confirmed.

"Yeah," I answered, but then I grimaced. I probably wasn't supposed to say _'yeah'_ anymore, was I? But then I pressed forward. "Well, Dolly said she tasted like horse manure to you, and the antelope said it tasted like vomit ..." I thought about what I had said. "Is that true?"

Rosalie was quiet. I wondered how I offended her with my answer. She _did_ ask.

"Rosalie?" I said. "Did I say something wrong?" _... again? _I added that thought ruefully.

"No, actually, you description was very accurate." Rosalie's voice was distant. "Surprisingly accurate, in fact, and I wonder how you came to know this so precisely."

I waited in silence.

"Are you going to ask me that?" I finally asked her when she hadn't said anything for a while.

"No," she answered quietly. "I've found that the answers to why-questions eventually become evident with time, and, being what I am now, I have all the time in the world, don't I?"

Was she saying that I wasn't supposed to ask why-questions, too? Had I done something wrong by asking her earlier why she wanted me to go to Heaven?

And then I wondered if she were telling me that you don't get the real reason when you ask a why-question ... so did that mean that it really wasn't because she was being selfish? That she was trying to get me to Heaven for some other reason?

Yeah, her being selfish trying to get me to Heaven ...? That just didn't fly when you thought about it. What could the real reason be?

"Drink your water," Rosalie's scolding command interrupted my thoughts, so I quickly took a guilty sip, feeling I had been caught. She was probably reading my mind again.

"What did ..." Rosalie asked hesitantly. "What did they say you were ... like ... to me?"

Here I had to pause myself. I didn't want to lie to Rosalie, but I didn't want to tell her voices were talking to me. She had probably guessed as much by my screaming at the forest that morning, but to come right out and say that ...?

"Well, I tasted like dessert ... to you ...?" I know Rosalie had said I should think about what I said before I said it, but it was so hard not to say _'um'_ as I navigated through my answer. "Um, like strawberries and cream?" Apparently _too_ hard. "With a chocolate sauce? Or so I was told."

I didn't do perfectly on the hemming and hawing, but I was pleased that I didn't say anything about voices telling me things. No sense in giving _more_ reasons for Rosalie to have me locked away.

Rosalie seemed to be thinking about other things, however, for her reply was filled with an inexplicable relief.

"Not even close," she said, and then she repeated more forcefully: "Not even close."

"Really?" I asked incredulously. I don't recall having portentous dreams before, but the vividness of my dreams now, and how they always seemed to be dead on? Well, I guess I was surprised that they could be wrong, too, because they felt so _real._

"Yes, really really," Rosalie said seriously.

"Then how ..." _Don't say 'um,'_ I reminded myself. "How do I taste?"

Silence.

"I mean, hypothetically," I added quickly. _Hypothetically,_ that is, if she hadn't taken blood from my body ... um ... somehow from ... _somewhere_ already.

"Very much like you smell to me," Rosalie answered quietly after a moment.

I thought about that. "Like teary, stinky, sweaty cowgirl smell?"

I had done my share of crying today ... okay, perhaps more than my share of crying today ... and Rosalie's meticulous care of the stove made the cabin a bit more than comfortably warm. When I blushed, which I did often, I suppose it felt like a hot flash would feel like, and the exertion from the walking today and putting on the warm clothes inside ... well, the bath this morning helped, but it being late and all ...

"No, not at all. I surmise you smell to me very much like I smell to you," she replied.

"Just like you? So, like flowers? Like honeysuckle and rose?" I asked surprised.

I couldn't believe it. Maybe being a vampire changed your view of reality, that's why they saw people as food and not as, you know, people to talk with. Maybe that why she saw me as beautiful and graceful because she saw everything through this warped vampire lens.

I wondered, idly, if she smelled, well, not stinky, but just ordinary to herself. _I_ didn't smell like flowers to myself; I wondered if the same was true for her. But I stopped wondering because she was speaking again.

"Not exactly," she responded hesitantly, "your scent complements mine, nearly perfectly, so it is indeed floral, but you have ... your scent is lavender ... and ... and ..." Rosalie's voice became strained, "and freesia. So we ... our scents ..."

Rosalie stopped. I couldn't see her in the darkness, but I could almost hear her internal struggle.

"We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to," I said quickly.

Rosalie was quiet, and then: "It's all right. This is something you wish to understand."

"But it's hard," I said sympathetically.

"Yes," Rosalie said, "it's hard, but I can manage."

I thought about that. Something hard for Rosalie. Best not to push it, especially in the dark where it was really hard to gauge just how hard it actually is for her.

"No," I said, "it's okay. I got the gist anyway."

And I _did_ get the gist. If all I wanted to do when I was near her was to get get _nearer, _and my draw was like that to her?

She was strong. God! She was strong, I realized, because she could just pick me up at anytime and _take_ me, but she didn't. If it were me? Smelling as she does to me?

She probably wouldn't last two seconds if our rôles were reversed.

God! She was strong.

I thought about all this in silence.

"Rosalie ..."

"Yes?" She was so quiet and patient now: calm, not agitated like a minute ago.

"I'm not gonna ask about ... you know ... but ..."

"But?" I heard a tinge of humor with a touch of caution.

I pressed forward timidly: "What does freesia smell like?"

I knew what lavender smelled like, kinda soapy, right? But I never heard of freesia before. I guess it must smell good, right? But I was curious anyway.

"It smells like lavender," Rosalie said factually, "but it has a more delicate and feminine smell than lavender, not at all cloying. It's sweet and dainty." Then she paused, and I heard a smile in her voice as she added: "... just like you are."

I almost spit out the water I was drinking. Okay, well, I actually did spray a very tiny little bit. _Sweet and dainty?_ She definitely had her view warped. Seriously warped.

I coughed a little bit before I could talk. "Rosalie! You can't do that to a girl when I'm drinking like that!"

"Do what?" was the innocent reply. I didn't know if she was being sarcastic or she really really was ...

"At any rate," Rosalie's voice interrupted my thoughts, "your pronoun does not agree with its antecedent: you should have used 'she's' not 'I'm'."

"Rosalie," I responded exasperated: "that's really annoying. Would you stop correcting me all the time? Huh? Please?"

"I don't correct you all the time," Rosalie corrected me. "Only when you are wrong. Besides, a lady always uses the proper and correct word for the occasion."

"And I ain't no lady," I said, just to irritate her, "and you can't make me one!" I snapped back.

"Double negative." _God! She never let up, did she!_ "And we'll see about what I am or am not capable of doing and what you are capable of achieving." _And_ she just didn't give in.

I sighed.

Rosalie sighed in response.

But I couldn't help but smile, and the tension in the darkness eased. We were both bound and determined to have our own way.

We were both so alike.

I took another sip of water as I contemplated the pure impossibility of what I just thought.

"Rosalie ..."

The vampire in question waited for me to continue.

"How do you know what freesia smells like? Do you remember that from when you were ..." But how did I continue? Should I say 'when you were alive?' or 'human?' or what?

Rosalie seemed to understand, because she answered anyway. "A lady is always dressed and perfumed appropriately, so I suppose I had smelled freesia when I was human, ... but I only remember one smell from when I was alive, and it wasn't freesia."

"What was the smell you remember?" I asked curiously. I shouldn't have. I should have heard the regret in her voice.

"Scotch," she answered curtly. "Single-malt scotch."

I gasped.

She continued. "I didn't even know it was Royce's preferred drink until that night. He never really drank around me. One time at a social function he put his lips to champagne, but he grimaced at the taste, so I was _afraid_ he was a teetotaller! Can you imagine that? But it wasn't that, was it? It was just that his preference tended in the stronger direction for his drinks. I didn't know that at the time." Then she added darkly: "But then I did find out."

"It was that night. Royce called me over to him. I didn't even see him before he called me, as I was so wrapped up in other thoughts, but then he called me, 'Rose!' And nobody had called me 'Rose' before, because nobody had loved me before ..."

Rosalie was quiet for a second, and I wondered: was she fishing for sympathy? What she said seemed melodramatic, but the way she said it, so factually, didn't sound like that: it sounded fatalistic.

"And so when Royce said, 'Rose!'" she continued, "I was so taken off guard, so pleased, because finally somebody did love me ..." Then she added regretfully, "... or at least that's what I thought. And Royce had really never acknowledged me before, not really: he was always talking about me or around me, but never really to me, so I thought ..."

She stopped for a moment.

"Well," she said, "whatever I thought, I disregarded propriety, and went right over to him and his friends, ignoring the signs, that is, until I was right there, and then that _stench,_ ..." Her voice turned rancorous with the memory, "that thick, heavy, peaty stench of scotch floating around Royce and the others enveloped me."

"By that time of the night, Royce had a flask of the Glenlivet twelve year that he was drinking. The cheap stuff, just five dollars ..."

I couldn't help thinking: _a whole five dollars!_ That was a day's wage. That was enough to feed Pa and me for weeks ... not that we ate much nor fancy, but ... one bottle? Five dollars? I couldn't imagine it.

"... I found this out," she said dispassionately, "when he knocked me face down in the snow and emptied it on me. 'She smells better now, doesn't she, chums?' he asked sardonically."

Her voice changed when she quoted those words. They became the voice of a strong man, a refined man, ... a cruel man. _Royce's voice,_ I realized.

"And his friends all laughed at the sport of it. The sport of me. And the smell of it in my hair ... I will never forget that smell. I wish I could, but now it's burned into my being. And then he ..."

Rosalie stopped suddenly.

"I'm sorry." she apologized. I realized she stopped for me, because she probably heard my heart beating in my chest. It was beating so hard _I_ could almost hear it.

Then she said very quietly. "I paid him back. Edward and I went shopping one evening when I could bear to be among people again a few months after I was ..." Rosalie paused, then continued more strongly, "and he bought me a bottle of the thirty-three year old cellar reserve. He _really_ didn't want to, because he knew my intentions, but he also knew I was getting that bottle, even if it was over the dead body of the shopkeeper, and Edward didn't like that idea all that much ... although I _probably_ wouldn't have harmed the old man ..." Rosalie's voice here was considering. "So Edward paid, and he got to play the gentleman and flash his money, which always fed his ego. The bottle was seventy dollars, but it was worth every penny of Edward's money for me."

I thought that vampires didn't drink. Well, didn't drink _that. _And ... seventy dollars? It was impossible for me to imagine spending that much money ... that was taking more than a whole two-week's paycheck and just ... _spending_ it. And on one bottle?

You could furnish a whole bedroom with a ten-piece set ... a_ nice_ ten-piece set ... for that much money. _All that money,_ I thought.

"Because when I finally caught up with Royce months later, deep into that night, I poured out a shot for him after I showed him the label, and let him take his time to drink it. 'Thanks,' he said," her voice changed to his. It sounded taken by surprise. Then her voice reverted to hers as she continued. "And I let him enjoy that one last drink. He watched me the whole time he drank it, but I waited. I was patient. I let him finish it. And when he did ..."

I could just feel in the darkness what was coming, and the air was thick with dread.

"That's when I forced the entire contents of the rest of the bottle down his throat. That was probably the worst thing I could have done to him that night, and I had done many things to him already, but forcing him to take that rare and exquisite spirit in one gulp instead of savoring it as he would have in other circumstances? That offended his sense of pride, all right, wasting that bottle of scotch that he valued so much more than me."

"That was the last thing he tasted in his mortal existence: his precious and refined single-malt scotch. And I hope," her voice turned fierce and vindictive, "that scotch is the fuel that feeds the flames that burns him in Hell eternally, because that smell is the last smell that I experienced in my mortal life, and now I'm stuck with it eternally."

My throat was closed with the fear and the intensity I felt from listening to her story.

"Scotch: that is the smell I remember from my humanity," Rosalie concluded with regret, "but I wish it wasn't."

It was quiet for a moment.

"Rosalie ..." I said, "may I tell you something?"

I pressed on into the silence, "I'm sorry for ... that, but you have to just let it go."

"Oh, but I have," was Rosalie's easy reply.

"So your hoping that Royce burns forever is letting it go?" I challenged gently.

It was quiet for a moment.

"You should have seen me before," Rosalie said. "No, strike that. It's a good thing you didn't see me before, but let's just say the Cullens probably regretted choosing to add me to their happy little vampire family. I was much, much worse until ..."

I waited for Rosalie to continue, but she didn't.

"Being better than 'much, much worse' isn't being better, Rosalie," I said.

"I assume you've read _Sense and Sensibility_ before," Rosalie said quietly.

"Yes, I have," I answered.

I was getting used to her sudden topic changes. I suppose this one will lead to her point eventually.

"Well, you, like Marianne, have not been acquainted with the ways of the world, and neither I do wish that upon you, because Marianne's acquaintance scarred her forever. But be that as it may, you have no idea what I've ... what it's ..." Rosalie's voice became hesitant.

Then she turned serious: "I hope that you never do. Just understand that there are some things I just can't let go."

I thought about what she said. "You can't? Or you won't?"

"Good catch," Rosalie voice was rueful. But that's all she said.

"Marianne was happy again," I offered. "You could ..."

"Get myself a _man? _That solves all problems then?_" _Rosalie said spitefully. "Just like for Marianne? 'Oh, I'm happy now because I've replaced one man for another!' Is that it? Just like Esmé wanted for me? 'Oh, have Edward and then you'll be happy and everyone will be happy.' Is that it? Or just like mother or the whole population of _men?_ 'Oh, what's wrong with Rosalie? Is she just bitchy? Or is it her _time of the month?_ You know what she needs? What she needs is a _good fuck_ to settle her down. That's what she needs.' Is that what you're saying?"

Rosalie was panting with fury.

I waited a moment.

"May I finish?" I asked quietly.

The quiet from Rosalie was just pure anger.

"Marianne chose to be happy; that's how I see it," I said. "She made her mistakes, but she chose to move on and chose to be happy for her sister and with her family and chose to let the ways of the world give her a little bit of wisdom, even if it was hard-won wisdom, and, yes, she got married at the end, but she did that after she found her happiness, not to make her happy."

"Oh, and everything is always so neat and tidy with the handsome prince sweeping you off to your happily-ever-after. That's why those stories are _fiction!_ And given the story you told me of your own family situation, _you_ should know that!_"_ Rosalie was holding onto her anger.

"Rosalie," I said quietly, "I was happy with my family ..."

Rosalie snorted furiously.

"... and I see that you are ..." _very ..._ "angry, but I prefer that you not take it out on me, so would you at least not use language like that? I've never heard that word before, and I'd prefer not to hear it said like that from you."

Rosalie was quiet.

"Then how do you know what it means?" she asked quietly.

"I don't," I answered, "but I can guess from how you used it that it isn't very nice."

"No, it isn't very n-..." Rosalie stopped. "Well, I mean ..."

"You are just so pure," Rosalie said sadly, "and I've trespassed on that." She continued regretfully, "I'm sorry for saying that. I shouldn't have told you any of this."

"Rosalie, I asked, you told me ... not exactly in the way that I like to hear," I said, accepting her apology, "but I'm really not this perfect thing that you say that I am."

"I could say the same thing to you." Rosalie answered.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I see how you see me and how you see yourself," Rosalie said, "You see me as this perfect thing: this beautiful, powerful creature. You idolize me, whereas I hope you've seen just now, there is nothing in me to admire. You see me as beautiful and yourself as ugly, whereas in truth, the exact opposite is the case."

Well, I saw her that way she said I saw her because she is the things she says she is. As to idolizing her ... maybe that was too strong a word ... I mean, really, I didn't _idolize_ her.

Did I?

"Rosalie, that's just not true. You already know you can't make a PBJ, so you're not perfect." I tried to make light of the heaviness of the situation.

"What was wrong with the ..." she paused, then spelled it out slowly: "P.B.J.?" Rosalie asked in surprise.

"Didn't I tell you that ... oh, wait, I just told you about the soup." _Oops, this was embarrassing. _"Well, never mind; the PBJ was ... okay."

"Hm," Rosalie said dispiritedly.

She sat and I rested in the silence for a moment.

"Also, I wasn't suggesting that getting a man would solve your problems." I said, correcting her assumption, "I don't know anything compared to you, so I wouldn't make that suggestion, anyway."

"Oh, really?" Rosalie asked in disbelief.

"Yes, real-..." I started to snap back, but then I remembered I _had_ said exactly that three nights ago. "Um, whoopsy daisies! I mean, I wouldn't suggest that unless I was heavily medicated." I cringed as I apologized: "_Sorry 'bout that!"_

The cabin would be bright red if my blush provided light as well as heat.

"About that," Rosalie said in a reproachful tone.

"About what?" I asked timidly, not knowing what else she would mention from that very embarrassing night.

"Did someone go through the foodstuffs and has that somebody been contemplating self-medicating recently?" Rosalie's accusation caught me totally by surprise.

"My... my throat was hurting, and I ... I didn't take one drop of it anyway! I swear I didn't! Honestly!" I couldn't believe she knew this! How in the world did she find out? Does she know everything?

"Calm down! Calm down!" Rosalie said placatingly. "Yes, I saw you didn't take any, but I'm curious. You did contemplate it, didn't you?"

I think my blush would now set my pillow on fire. I nodded my head shamefacedly.

"But you chose not to because ...?" Rosalie pressed.

I whispered my answer: "'cause you'd get angry when I managed to kill myself by hugging the stove again. Besides, it wasn't right: you didn't say I could, so I thought ..."

"So, all on your own, when nobody else was looking, you did what you thought was the right thing," Rosalie finished for me.

I just shook my head. She was always turning things that I did totally upside down, painting me as this saint or something.

"Hm," Rosalie said.

"I read your book, Rosalie, I'm not this perfect thing. I read your book without permission," I argued.

"That shows prudence: I would have read it too, in your position, to see if it threatened my life."

I keep forgetting that there's just no arguing with Rosalie, she was just always right and perfect and hard.

But I picked up a different thread. "You said you'd read it to me; will you read it to me now?"

"Not tonight," Rosalie said.

"_You said,"_ I whined.

"I didn't exactly say that, no," Rosalie countered. "But, if you insist, I will start reading it to you. Perhaps during quiet time tomorrow."

"Tomorrow! Always tomorrow!" I groused.

"Which is almost upon us ..." Rosalie scolded. "If you find a way to stuff more hours into your temporal day, please let me in on your secret ... not that I need it for myself, but it's hard enough to keep up with all the things you need to do in a day."

The time passed in quiet for a while.

"You've always had it hard, haven't you?" I said after a while. "You've always had to make your own way, fighting for every single thing, and then it all falls apart. I wonder when you'll have your happily-ever-after, like Marianne."

"You're doing it again," Rosalie said, snapping me out of my reverie.

"What am I doing again?" I asked in confusion.

"Idolizing me." Rosalie took the empty cup from me.

"Good girl," she said patronizingly after she checked the cup.

"Thanks a lo-... _Eep!"_ My retort was lost in my surprise. I felt a damp cloth touch my cheeks and then gently wipe away my dried tear tracks. I guess I had been crying some tonight. I rolled my eyes at my own understatement.

"You know, Rosalie," I said after the cloth left my face, "that's very sweet of you, but you could warn a girl."

I just knew all these heart attacks couldn't be good for my constitution.

"I'm sorry," Rosalie responded easily, "I assumed that you could see me as clearly as I see you. I don't remember what it was to see through human eyes."

"Well, not all of us can be Miss Perfect!" I groused.

"Yes, not all of us can," Rosalie replied cryptically.

I sighed.

"Now, the long day has extended into a rather longer night; lie down and close your eyes," she commanded in firm motherly tones.

"Yes, Mo-...'am." _Eep!_ That was close; I almost said the 'M' word. We don't need another shouting-at-me outburst like the one on our way to the outhouse earlier today.

_Note to self: don't say the 'M' word, either._

I was just collecting these notes to myself, wasn't I?

And Rosalie was just one prickly pear, wasn't she? One prickly, sensitive, caring, hurting pear.

I complied with her instruction quickly, hoping she didn't catch my almost-mistake.

* * *

**Chapter Endnotes:**

I am indebted to the reader Massrié for citing canon, chapter and verse, to verify the Royce back-story.

Jane Austen's _Sense and Sensibility_ is freely available on the web at, e.g.: Project Gutenberg.


	49. Cinderella

**Chapter summary:** I swear to God, the next fairy tale Rosalie tells me ...

* * *

"Rosalie ..." I said after a while.

"Shhhhh. Sh-sh-sh. Sleep now. Sleep." Rosalie crooned.

"I can't," I whined.

Rosalie sighed. "Once upon a time ..." she began.

"Rosalie!" I whispered fiercely, "this had better not be a story like last night's!"

"No," Rosalie answered, "this is a history."

"Well, okay," I acquiesced grudgingly.

I could see her talking about God's Name again putting me right to sleep. No harm in that, I guess.

"Once upon a time, there lived a noble woman in a far-away castle in the Little Carpathians with pure, snow white skin ..." Her voice took on the story-teller's lilt.

Oh, it was _Snow White!_ The girl in the story was rescued by the handsome prince and the end, right? So I guess the story was okay, since it had a happy ending.

Wait a minute, was this our story? Did she see herself as the evil queen and me as the girl rescued by the prince? Who was the prince? Edward? Did she think Edward would find me and rescue me? Why?

And didn't she just say that the handsome prince sweeping you away was fiction, and she said it so angrily, as if she thought the whole idea was bad? Why would she be telling a story with the happily-ever-after ending if she hated it so much?

My thoughts were in turmoil, as I tried to concentrate on the relaxing and hypnotic sounds of her words telling the story instead of the conflict I felt in her telling it.

"... and every day ..." Rosalie continued "... she would look into her mirror, gazing at her perfection, and would ask herself: 'Who is the fairest in the land?' And she seemed to be regally pleased at the answer she received from her own reflexion. And she would hold court and listen, bored, to her peasants' requests, occasionally showing interest, not in their requests, but in something about them. This went on, day after day. Each morning she would gaze contentedly at herself, and each afternoon she would hold court. The peasants all feared her and told stories to scare each other, but they were a superstitious lot, so what could they know? Besides, the rule of the land was that each family would present themselves to her, Countess Báthory, and that she would give them an audience, so there was no avoiding her, despite their superstitious fears."

I could hear the contempt in Rosalie's voice for the stupid peasants. I wondered if they believed in the Doppelgänger like stupid me.

"Then one afternoon, one of her towns' mayors presented his family to her to pay their respects. The countess looked down at the family and something caught her eye. She dismissed them quickly, looking very displeased."

"The next morning she stood in front of her mirror and demanded: 'Who is the most beautiful in all the land?' She looked into her reflexion, but then stalked away and demanded her coach be prepared. Off she rode in her glass coach, and her guards on horseback were hard-pressed to keep up with her. Then after a unrelenting ride, she had her coach stopped in a field outside one of her towns, the town of Trenčín, the town, in fact, from which the mayor had visited just yesterday. There was a young maiden with long brown hair flowing around her heart-shaped face and beautiful, open, innocent brown eyes that stood in contrast to her creamy-white skin. She was gathering fruit from the apple orchard, and the countess summoned her."

"'Yes, your Grace?' the young girl asked, confused at seeing the Countess, beautiful and courtly beyond compare, or so the girl thought, come into her humble town after seeing the noble woman just yesterday."

"'You will come with me!' the Countess commanded, and there was no gainsaying her imperial decree. The girl couldn't even take the time to say goodbye to her father as the countess swept her away in her coach."

"Rosalie ..." I whispered.

Rosalie continued on, darkly and dispassionately, ignoring my pleading tone.

"The Countess would not see anybody that day as she had the girl in her private chambers. That night the guards came and collected a large sack that weighed nothing at all, as was the monthly custom. As they did so, their Countess hummed happily in her hot bath whose water no one was allowed to drain except the Countess herself. The guards threw the sack in the furnace, and the next day the ash was made into soap for the Countess' use. This soap, however, smelt like no other: it had a subtle lavender and freesia scent that made one dream of heaven and think of eternal bliss."

"Rosalie," I begged, whispering, "stop!"

"The next morning," Rosalie didn't stop, but continued relentlessly, "the Countess marched right up to her mirror, and exclaimed, 'Now I am the most beautiful in the land!' But then her look went from triumphant to sullen to spiteful to furious. She turned to her retainers and demanded, 'Am I not beautiful?' she screamed to them."

Just like Rosalie had screamed at me in the forest.

"Her grand vizier minced forward, bowing low, 'Your Grace,' he said obsequiously, 'you are the most beautiful of all the ...' He didn't get to finish his platitude, however, for the Countess grabbed a cudgel from one of her guards, and bashed that old man's head in with one blow, and then continued to rain blows on that now deformed body."

"'And that,' the Countess screamed, 'is the reward for lying to me!' But then her mind snapped, and her guards had to restrain her from doing herself and others harm, and she was carried, kicking and screaming, back to her private chambers, where they could hear the wails of a banshee haunted by madness issuing forth from the bed to which she was tied."

"The screaming didn't last long, for those superstitious peasants and those good townsfolk from Trenčín and Čachtice and other surrounding towns had formed an angry mob and stormed the castle, catching the guards unawares. The town mayor cried out for his daughter, calling 'la mia _bella_ figlia!' or 'my beautiful daughter!' over and over again, and his cries turned to anguish when he was shown where she was ... that is, where the ashes of what was left of her was. He held those ashes, and he held that soap to his face, his tears mixing with the ash as the mob dragged the Countess from her chambers and burned her at the stake for the witch that she was."

"And that is how the girl got her name: Cinderella. And Countess Báthory? She is also known as the 'Blood Countess,' but she has another name for her inhumanly pale white skin: the 'Ice Queen.'"

Rosalie was quiet as my tears slid down my face.

"Oh," she said after a moment, "you wanted a different story than yesterday, yes? I suppose that means a happy ending. Well, then, here it is: the castle was soon abandoned and became a ruin, but in what is left of the quadrangle where the countess was burned, there now grows a plethora of honeysuckle and a single rose bush, and, strangely, the scent of lavender can be detected by some brave enough to risk a visit to the cursed ruin of that Ice Queen, the Blood Countess, but others say it's freesia. So hard to tell the subtle difference for humans and their weak senses. Well, there it is: your happy ending; flowers growing from the ash in the ruin. The end."

It wasn't _Snow White;_ it wasn't _Cinderella._ It was another one of Rosalie's pointlessly heart-breaking stories. My tears made the pillow wet again.

"Was Countess Bathoby a vampire?" I whispered despondently.

"It was Countess _Báthory,"_ Rosalie corrected, "and, no, she wasn't a vampire; she couldn't have been. The Volturi would have gotten to her for being so brazen about things."

"Why, Rosalie? Why?" I asked.

"Because that's what they do, and they are very good and very quick about ..."

"No, Rosalie, I'm not asking that." I corrected her. "I'm asking why do you do this to yourself? Why do you keep telling these stories that only hurt you?"

"My dear, sweet child," she said in a compassionate tone, even though she was only one year older than me, "I am a vampire in Eternity. Nothing more can be done to me ... nothing more than what has already been done."

"Then why ... ?" I asked.

"I am doing this for you ..." she began.

"_Don't!" _I pleaded.

"I am doing this for you," she continued, softly, comfortingly, unabated, "so that you can see me as I am."

"I do! and it's not that, Rosalie, it's not!" I exclaimed. I felt her purring; but it was now working because I was tired from the lateness of the night and the hard thinking I did during the questions and answers from before. And from the emotional angst of the terrible 'happy ending' story Rosalie told. I felt myself slipping away, but I had to tell her this. I had to break through this 'Oh, I'm bad!' barrier she erected, even against herself.

"You do not," she purred. "You are caught in this whirlwind of events and circumstances, completely at the mercy of monsters your are powerless to fight, and you have the chance to make the right choices, but only if you see things clearly."

"I do, Rosalie, I do!" I fought back against my drooping eyelids. "It's you who ..."

"Just like the situation I was placed in." Rosalie's soft whisper was a sung lullaby. "I too felt rejected by my mother. I too was caught in events that I couldn't fight. I too was completely at the mercy of terrible, terrible monsters. Redeem yourself, as I cannot. Do not make my mistakes, for in this situation, you are me."

I gasped.

She rested a cold, smooth, calming hand on my head. "Now, sleep," she commanded.

As sleep overtook me, I now realized what "Li-..."-something stood for. For I realized what Rosalie was trying to be: she wasn't trying to be a mother to me, she wasn't trying to be a father to me. She wanted to be _me. _She wanted to be me, and she wanted me to be her. She didn't want me to be her daughter, as much as she wanted that. She wanted me to be _her_, so by saving myself I could save her from what she is now_._

"Li-..."-something stood for Rosalie's name.

It stood for 'Lillian.'

She wanted me to be her, but only better. And how could I do that if I couldn't even be half, no, not even a millionth, of what she is?

I feared sleep as I fell into it helplessly. Being her, ... but better? I just knew I would hate my dreams tonight.

* * *

**Chapter end notes:**

Countess Báthory Erzsébet, August 7, 1560 – August 21, 1614, reigned in Transylvania. She has a rather ... interesting ... history.


	50. Lillian, Arise!

**Chapter Summary:** She finally said it. She said she loves me. I thought she didn't, but she's saying she does. She's holding my hand in her soft, warm hand. Wait. Why are we floating above the snow? Why doesn't her hand feel cold?

* * *

"_Lillian."_

I opened my eyes, and sat up from the bed. A voice had just called me from outside, but unlike that horrible dream I had before, this wasn't a nothing of a whisper. No, it was a musical voice. Feminine and beautiful but also strong and clear.

"_Lillian,"_ the voice called again. I looked outside beyond the door swung wide open. The moon must have been out and full, because you know how one those bright, clear, cold winter nights the moon is bright enough to read by? It was that bright.

"_Lillian, arise."_

Either I didn't sleep much at all, or I must have slept through the night and into the next night, because I felt so _awake, _so _alive._ I got right up from the bed and walked out the door.

I had never done that before. Whenever I woke up before, I always had to claw my way out of bed ... that is, after I squeezed as much sleep as I could from the few minutes that Pa called me the first time to the commanding bark he gave saying that told me it was really time to get going.

He always had the coffee poured when I finally dragged myself to the kitchen for breakfast. Pa was a morning person. He always looked raring to go. I hated that, so we had an agreement: I wouldn't snap at him (which I never would do, anyway) so long as he didn't talk to me after I had started my second cup of coffee. That way he got his eggs on his plate, and not poured into his lap. The agreement worked well for both of us.

But now I just walked right out the door, toward the sound of the voice, even before I realized two things:

The first thing I realized was that the voice called me, and I went. I didn't even find it odd that I was called by name, and that name was 'Lillian.' It was if my body knew that was my name. I hadn't heard anyone call me 'Bella' in such a long time, and Rosalie had been saying 'Li-..'-this and 'Li-...'-that ... along with the realization from last night ... that I just somehow knew that _I_ was being called.

The other thing I realized was this.

It must have been cold outside. You know: that cool, crisp air that froze my eyeballs off? The air that I needed layers and layers of clothes that stifled me inside to be able to handle? It was here. I didn't feel cold, though, even though I was in PJs only.

I was also walking along in bare feet ... on top of the snow.

In fact, my whole posture had changed: my shoulders were thrown back. My head was erect and looking forward, not down. My feet didn't plod; they glided.

Just like ...

"_Lillian,"_ It was Rosalie's voice calling to me. That's what the voice was: Rosalie's. I turned my head in the direction from which I knew it came and walked, no, glided, toward it; toward the sound of water. My mind whirled, trying to grasp what was happening as my feet brought me, independent of conscious supervision, toward Rosalie.

She was standing by a large pine tree, the river not too far beyond her, looking at me, filled with expectation, as I approached her quickly and smoothly ... and gracefully.

She was so beautiful. She was limned in light, and seemed to be basking in the glow of the moonlight.

No, that's not quite right. She, and everything, was in the bright moonlight, but light seemed to be falling into her. It was reflected off her perfectly smooth skin of her face and bare arms, but the light also seemed to be somehow falling into her as well, so that she glowed _inside_ with the light that she absorbed as she glowed _outside_ with the light she reflected.

She was wearing ...

... does it really matter what she was wearing?

It didn't matter, because as I came up to her, she broke into a huge smile that was pleased and contented but at the same time joyful and triumphant.

What she was wearing was that smile that blinded me with its brilliance. What she was wearing was this indescribably aura of victorious delight and delighted victory.

I came to rest right in front of her. That was another odd thing. When I was moving, I felt still, and when I came to a stop, I didn't feel the need to fidget. When I stopped, everything in me stopped, waiting, expectant, but ... still. Absolutely, utterly, ... powerfully ... still.

Rosalie gravely, slowly, carefully, took my hands in hers, holding my fingers in her closed palms. You could say the gesture was dainty or lady-like, but it might have been that, but it was really more like ...

It was really more like tender.

"Oh, Lillian," Rosalie sighed, "you are _so beautiful!"_

My eyes widened in shock, because those were the exact words I was thinking when I looked at her now: glowing, limned in light, happy, joyful and at peace.

I opened my mouth to correct her, but the only thing I did was to gasp, because faster than lightning, Rosalie was speeding toward me and then grasping me in an open arm embrace.

And I saw it all happen. She didn't blur. Just the opposite, it was if time slowed, and I saw her hair feather back as she sped through the air toward me. I saw her shift her hands and arms, and instead of being caught by surprise, I anticipated her action with my own. I saw her face come to mine, and felt her cheek press against mine, and I felt the smoothness of it, but I also felt its softness.

She dipped her head down to my neck, and she breathed in deeply.

But, unlike before, where she would gasp in pain or sigh longingly, she breathed me in slowly and luxuriously, and as she breathed me in, I dipped my own head to her perfect neck and did the same, reveling that perfect admixture of honeysuckle and rose that now smelt better than ever before, but not with a pull or compulsion to it. No, it was just right. It was _her._ It was happiness, joy and peace. It was perfect: it was just for me.

"Ah!" she sighed contentedly.

"You smell so wonderfully good!" she murmured emphatically.

She pulled away from our embrace ... _our_ embrace because my arms had naturally wrapped around her and hers wrapped around me ... and rested her arms on my shoulders, looking deeply into my eyes.

She brought her hand up to my face and rubbed the back of it against my cheek.

I looked at her in askance and with a little bit of wonder at the joy that just seemed to be pulsing within her.

"I thought I would miss it, but I don't at all," she said to me. "Not at all."

I raised my eyebrow. What didn't she miss?

I opened my mouth to ask her: "Ro-..."

But then I stopped.

What came out of my mouth was not my voice. It was somebody else's voice. It was a Greta Garbo voice. It was deep, resonant, rich and compelling.

It was musical.

I swallowed, breathed in another breath of _her_, and, pressing through my confusion, asked more firmly: "What don't you miss?" My voice was a symphony.

"I don't miss your blush," she said, smiling at me, and stroked my cheek again.

It was then that I realized that I would have been blushing at her touch that was so intimate in its tenderness ... but I wasn't.

I looked at Rosalie smiling at me, glowing in the moonlight. I experienced and felt and heard everything that was happening, but I just couldn't process it.

I carefully brought my hand up to her cheek, feeling the softness and smoothness of it.

I put my hand to my own cheek, and felt the same softness, the same smoothness.

Rosalie nodded at me, smiling.

I touched her cheek with the back of my hand. It was warm. It was just warm. It wasn't cold and electric and warm and tingling.

It was just warm ... as in the same warmth as my skin.

I turned my hand and cupped her cheek with it. Her cheek was marble smooth but soft and pliant and yielding, but I could still feel the impenetrability and strength of it now as well.

Rosalie closed her eyes and leaned her face into my hand.

"Ah, Lillian!" she sighed happily.

"What happened?" I whispered so quietly, but still the musicality of my voice came out with my whisper.

Rosalie opened her eyes and looked at me seriously. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know," she repeated sincerely. "All I know is that you are like this ... you are like me now. We are equals. We are the same." She grew more and more serious, more and more determined, but it did not take away from her inner joy.

"And so now I don't need to hide what I've been wanting to say to you for so long," she said. "And so now I can tell you."

I felt the weight of her words like electricity in the air, but my heart wasn't beating a million times a minute. I now realized that it wasn't beating at all. And I felt the electric excitement and anticipation in the words that I hoped to hear from her ... _that I knew she would say_ ... but I also felt a peaceful assurance, a stability, a calm ... my emotions weren't controlled by my bodily reactions anymore, and my body didn't react to emotions. I felt excited and calm. I felt peaceful and sure.

"What is it that you have to say to me, Rosalie?" I asked quietly, marveling at the calm and strength in my now pure voice.

Rosalie wrapped me again in a very powerful embrace that I had seen crush a tree, but gave me no discomfort whatsoever.

I felt quite the opposite of discomfort, in fact.

"Lillian," Rosalie said, whispering in my ear as she held me tightly, then she pulled back and looked right into my eyes, and she said it: "I love you."

That's when I realized what was happening.

"This is a dream," I sang out in despair, "This is another stupid dream!"

"It's not a dream, Lillian," she kept saying my name. She kept saying it, claiming it, but saying it so easily and naturally, "for our kind does not sleep. We do not dream. This is real. I'm really saying this to you. I love you, Lillian, now and forever."

"Rosalie, please, I want to believe," she looked at me with wide-open eyes filled with sincerely, "but I know it's a dream. I just know it!"

"No, it's not," she said so calmly, "My love is real, Lillian. I love you."

"God! Rosalie, I'm scared!" The voice coming out of my mouth was so calm, but it was also filled with purpose: "I want to believe you, but if I do, and I wake up ... I won't be able to stand it. I won't. Please kill me if this is a dream, and I wake up from it. Because I can't live with one more heartbreak like this."

"Lillian," she explained patiently, lovingly, "I can't kill you anymore; nothing can, for now you are eternal."

"Just promise me, Rosalie."

Rosalie looked at me from arms' length, put her smooth and warm hand to my cheek, smiled tenderly, and said: "I promise, my love."

"Now I know it's a dream," I said accusingly, "because you said you only may make one promise forever."

"I promised you that I would try to tell you when I killed you, Lillian," she said solemnly, "but now you cannot die, so I can make this new promise," and she smiled.

"... to kill me if I'm dreaming," I confirmed.

She nodded.

"... but I can't die," I confirmed again.

She smiled.

"See," I said, "I knew I was dreaming. You would only love me if I were dreaming!"

"Lillian," Rosalie sighed happily, "do you wish for me to prove that you aren't dreaming?"

I was about to demand how she could possibly do that.

But before I could make that demand, she wrapped my head in her arms, and her face rushed toward me.

"Ro-..." my shout of surprise was silenced by her lips.

I pulled back in shock, pushing at her shoulders with my hands. I found that I _could_ pull back from what was before an impossibly strong grasp. But Rosalie pressed into my withdrawal, stepping between my stance and keeping her lips, not demandingly, but firmly pressed to mine. I looked at her. Her eyes were closed, and her face was serene, composed, happy.

I dropped my hands, melting into her kiss, surrendering to her, closing my eyes, feeling the moment, together, with her.

She didn't break off her kiss, she held my head in her arms, and her lips were pressed devotedly to mine.

That's when I realized that is was real. This wasn't a dream. She _was really _kissing me. She did really _love me._

I gasped into her kiss, and my arms wrapped around her shoulders, holding onto her tightly, pulling me to her and her to me, and I returned her kiss with my own.

We held that kiss, each to each other, forever and a day.

...

Eventually, she pulled back.

She breathed out: "Lillian, I love you."

She looked so intensely into my eyes, waiting, expectant.

It was my turn. I knew that, but my throat closed up into a tight knot, sealing my voice in my chest. It was my turn, but I literally choked under the pressure. I broke contact with her eyes and looked at the ground.

Rosalie shifted. She dropped her arms from my shoulders, but put her hand into mine.

"It's okay, sweetheart," she said, understandingly. "Too much is happening at once for you. I know: I've been there. You don't have to say anything now. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. We have all the time in the world now. We have all the time in the world."

As she said this, she walked me along the riverbank, holding my hand in hers. She held it lightly, as if she were saying that I could take my hand away if I wanted to, but she was here for me, right now, and always, if I wanted that. She gave everything of herself to me, and expected nothing from me in return.

"Rosalie ..." I whispered, my eyes still cast down.

She stopped and turned to me.

"I..." I said.

She waited.

"I loooo-ahh..." I whispered so softly that the quiet breeze over the snow was louder.

But she heard me.

I looked up into her eyes, and I could see her holding in her excitement and expectation and hope.

For me.

"Rosalie ..." I said into those hopeful eyes.

"Rose," I corrected, and the smiled that she was suppressing was twitching her lips upward, escaping from her iron control.

"I love you," I said. "I love you, Rose. I love you."

And I did. I felt my whole body _change,_ as if a heavy weight was lifted off my chest, and I could breathe again. It was if something that was tearing me limb from limb relented, and my arms and legs were glad to find themselves back on me. It was if I had died and was now reborn. It was if I had nothing before, and now I had everything. I love her.

_I love her._

And that's all that mattered, and that's all that ever would.

And Rosalie was smiling a smile so bright that the sun itself couldn't brighten this patch of earth if it had replaced the brightest moon that had ever been.

"Good," Rosalie said easily, smiling lightly.

She turned, keeping her hand in mine, and we continued our walk along the riverbank.

"Lovely night, isn't it?" She asked this casually as if this were the most natural thing in the world, but I heard just the slightest hint of pure joy underlying her question.

"Yes, Rose," I whispered to her and stopped, looking at the pure beauty that was her. "It's a lovely night."

She looked back at me and smiled.

"Did you wish to keep walking, or was there anything else you wished to do?" she asked.

"We could do nothing ..." I suggested and blinked at her.

"Oh, Lillian," Rose exclaimed, "I just cannot resist that _come hither_ look those big doe eyes of yours are giving me!" She was smiling hugely, practically vibrating in place.

I looked for a few seconds at her just standing there.

"So why're you resistin'?" I drawled.

I could not believe it! My voice was all sultry and provocative! I would've died with embarrassment if this had been me earlier tonight.

But it wasn't earlier tonight. It was not. I didn't blush. No, it was Rose who gasped, and then closed the distance between us, her lips crashing into mine. She wrapped me in a desperate, needy embrace, as her lips fought to kiss me harder.

Let me just say that if she thought she was kissing me hard, she had another thing coming: me. I grasped her with all my might and returned her kiss with my own, fighting to show my love for her harder than she was for me.

I think we both won this struggle to outdo each other, although I wouldn't have minded if I lost, either. I wouldn't mind if she loved me more, not that it would be true, but if she wanted to show me, then it was fine by me. I wouldn't mind losing the "who loves who more" game with Rose.

Not one bit.

Rose eventually pulled away.

"Hey!" I complained lazily, "Why're you pulling back?"

"Oh, Lillian," she sighed. "Don't get me wrong, I would love to make this moment forever, but ..."

"But I'm thinking about you." She looked at me with concern.

"Well, then, come here," I said, giving her what she called my _come hither_ look. I swear, I love her to death, but that girl just worried too much about everything.

"I would, but ..." she looked torn.

"But?" I asked confused.

"But ... aren't you ... _thirsty?"_ she asked, looking at me cautiously.

I suddenly realized, that, no, I wasn't thirsty. I was _parched!_ For the second time, my throat closed, and it felt absolutely dry. I swallowed, hard.

That made it worse, so much worse. The saliva went down my throat, but it felt like gasoline, ... ignited gasoline.

I howled and dove to the edge of the river.

"That's not going to ..." Rosalie shouted after me, but I wasn't listening. I plunged my head in the water, and I couldn't help but notice that it had an odd look and smell to it, but I didn't care. I had to put out the fire in my throat, so I drank deeply, swallowing a gulp, then swallowing another before I registered the taste.

It tasted like motor oil and grease. And how it felt, the water? It felt like I was swallowing lead pellets in buck shot.

I snapped my head out of the river, spitting out as much of that contaminated water as I could, but there were now big lumps of it going down my throat already, settling in my stomach. It wasn't painful. It didn't hurt, but they just stayed there, not being absorbed at all, forming uncomfortable balloons of liquid in my stomach.

I looked to Rose and whimpered. My throat was on fire, but the uncomfortable displacement in my stomach was the more unbearable of the two.

She looked at me pityingly. "Sweetheart, you can't ingest that anymore. It's just going to stay in there until you get rid of it."

"How ...?" I begged.

Rose came over to me, and moved me into a squatting position. Now my stomach did cramp painfully, but I understood what she meant. I pulled off my PJ bottoms, beyond embarrassment in my discomfort and pushed hard, grunting with the effort to expel the foreign lump of liquid in my stomach.

Rose was squatting behind me, and whispered consolingly in my ear. "Your body doesn't work like that any more, you have to relax and let it go out." She put her right hand under my top and began rubbing my stomach in gentle circles, her left hand resting on my left shoulder.

"Relax," she said quietly, rubbing slow circles on my stomach.

I did. That is, I tried. I started to relax a little bit, and I felt myself let go, a little bit. But then ...

But then I suddenly became very aware of her cheek next to my cheek. I became very aware of her hand rubbing my stomach, but it was no longer relaxing me, ...

No, I felt a tingling down there; I felt her hand on my shoulder: it was an electric feeling of desire. I felt _a need._

Totally out of nowhere a snarl escaped my throat. I grabbed her hand resting on my shoulder and put it on my breast, pressing it hard against me, and, at the same time, with my other hand, I grabbed her hand on my stomach and pushed it _down._

Rose almost pulled back in surprise, but I pushed harder, and leaned my head against her shoulder and moaned with the pure shocks of pleasure the feeling of her skin on me gave, and then ...

And then I let go completely, crying out in a feeling so pure that I couldn't identify it, and everything whited out before my eyes, and I felt myself just _releasing_ down there and felt my body completely dissolve.

I heard Rose's dry comment of "Well, that's one way to get rid of the water ..."

But that was all she could say, because, again, totally without me realizing what I was doing, my head whipped around, and I smashed my lips against hers, silencing her and pressing myself against her with all my might, my hands to her hands, my lips to her lips, answering a _need_ I felt _for her._

I could feel her smile against my lips, but she returned my kiss with her own.

But suddenly, she spun me around, so that I was facing her, and then shoved me away from her right into the river with a violent push.

"What the ..." I began in confusion and anger, feeling hurt and slightly rejected with her sudden action.

"Run, Lillian! _Run!"_ she screeched. Rose's face was contorted with terror.

That when I heard them. Three sets of footsteps on top of the snow crust.

Vampires.

Rose turned quickly and began to descend into a crouch, issuing a hiss that was both protective and murderous.

She never finished moving into that crouch. Well, her head didn't. It stayed right were it was, then rolled up and over her shoulders to land in the snow, facing me. Her eyes her wide and she mouthed one word to me: "Run!"

It's then that I saw him. A man in a gray cloak, lean and sharp as a spear, standing next to Rose's body still descending into the crouch.

He said "Felix" dispassionately, and when he said that, another man in a gray cloak came out of nowhere, arms extended, he reached out to Rose's neck and ...

I saw it, but I didn't understand what I saw. It was if Rose's body was a sheet of paper, and his hands pulled that sheet in half, right down the center.

It was all happening so fast. How could a man bigger than a tank move so quickly? How could I see it all happen while everything moved through normal time so quickly but so slowly, I drew in my breath to scream.

The spear of a man said: "Rhee."

And a smaller woman, about my height, maybe a little smaller, in a cloak that was so light that it was almost white stepped out of the forest. She was old, so old, for a vampire, in her late thirties or forties, with jet black hair, she looked at the pieces that were Rose's body and ...

I saw it. It looked like pure heat coming out of the woman, and it exploded around was used to be Rosalie's body, but was now a column of flame reaching up to the sky. What fed the flames was now nothing but ash.

I screamed "NO!" in pure anguish.

They turned to me. I dove at the lean man, snarling, but the one called Felix grabbed me by my neck with one arm, pinning me to himself as if he were holding a squirming child.

Felix laughed with a twisted joy: "Newborns," he said, "so easy and _fun_ to destroy!"

He started to close his arm around my throat as I struggled.

"No," said the lean one.

"Aw, Dimitri!" Felix complained.

The lean one called Dimitri came up to me, looked me in the eyes, and said. "No, this one's not an abomination." He looked me over contemptuously and turned, walking away into the forest.

The one called Rhee immediately followed Dimitri, and Felix whispered in my ear: "Tell all the other shit-eaters that you can find that they are next."

Then he shoved me hard face first down into the snow, muttering _"Abominations!"_ following the others into the forest.

I got right back up, looking for one of them to kill. They were all gone. I looked over to the bonfire that was Rosalie.

"No," I whispered, and my beautiful, musical voice mocked me with its calm.

"No!" I shouted, and the tears did not fall, so the anger and the sadness stayed inside me, with nowhere to go and no way to be expressed.

"NO!" I screamed.

The stillness of the forest imitated my own stillness, silently echoing my despair.

* * *

**A/N: **I am grateful the reader Avarenda for sharing the, erhm, synchronicity of her prescient dream.


	51. Take Me

**Chapter summary:** What was I going to do? If she fell off my lap, with her luck, she would probably give herself serious head trauma. I wasn't in the bed with her, so this was okay ... wasn't it?

* * *

I woke screaming. We were racing to the outhouse again; I was wrapped in a wet blanket again; my clothes were wet.

Again.

"Almost there," Rosalie said desperately. "Almost there," she repeated.

"NO!" I wailed, jarred awake from the pure Hell of my dream to this pure Hell of realizing that it was all just a dream.

"Just hold ..." Rosalie began, but I was vomiting now, and the stream of it as we raced came to a sudden stop, because we stopped, too. Rosalie held me above the ground, and held my hair from my face, as I regurgitated the soup, and then began dry heaving, but then ...

"Oh, no!" Rosalie exclaimed, and her hand moved from my face and hair down below, where she ripped off my PJ bottoms and lifted up the blanket.

I was still dry heaving, but, well, stuff was dribbling out of me everywhere now. My body just entirely let go, and I made a nice disgusting stinking mess of myself on myself and on the snow-covered forest floor. And, given my luck, on Rosalie, too.

Isn't this just swell.

Eventually my heaving subsided, because there was nothing left for me to heave, and I had no strength left in my body to heave it. Rosalie used my PJ bottoms to wipe off my legs, and then she scooped up the dirty snow in them. With a simple flick of her wrist, she threw that dirty, stinky snow ball far, far away, in the direction of the river, and raced me to the outhouse.

The coals were already there. The pail was already filled with water. The candle was freshly lit. All this had happened already. It was if Rosalie knew this was all going to happen, and she had prepared for it.

Rosalie gingerly set me down on one of the crapper seats.

"Do you need to ...?" Rosalie asked.

I just looked up at her ... I found I could cry again, I was leaking out of my eyes, as well. I swallowed, which set my throat on fire again, but this time it was a different fire. I guess I had been screaming quite a bit, both asleep and awake. My throat was raw.

"I'll wash you," Rosalie said quietly, not looking at me.

And she did. She not only washed my private areas, with soap, but she also lifted me up and washed my legs, too. Then she dried me, gently. The whole time, I was just nothing, just a rag doll in her arms, trapped in the aftershocks of the dream and trapped in the reality of this mess now.

And then she washed my hands. I wondered absently at that, but I felt something wet and sticky on my right hand ... like last night.

You know, I thought it was really bad that I would pee in my dreams and then Rosalie would have to clean that up. I thought it was even worse that I had a dream where I begged Rosalie to have her way with me, only to be woken up by Rosalie and then have her clean me then, too. But to have both things happen in the same dream?

Now I knew I had really hit bottom, because I couldn't imagine a scenario worse than this one.

Her scent didn't help one bit, either. It was so much stronger than usual, it just seemed to be oozing out of her like the smell coming out of an oven baking bread. Her presence filled the whole space, and then overflowed it. It made me recall the last time her scent was this powerful: that night of my last dream when she had to clean me _and_ the whole outhouse. It made me just want to grab her to me and breathe her in. But that wouldn't be right. This Rosalie was not the one of my dreams.

Again.

Rosalie ripped the blanket right down the middle, just like that monster tank of a vampire ... was it Felix? ... ripped her, except she ripped the halves into top half and bottom half, ... or dry half and wet half. She rewrapped me in the dry top half, and we were racing back to the cabin as the bottom half joined my soiled clothes, probably in the river.

Not that it mattered. Not that I cared.

When we reentered the cabin, Rosalie sat me on the bed and retrieved a new blanket and a new pair of panties and PJs for me. She laid the blanket on the bed beside me and extended the clothes to me.

I looked down at the clothes. I knew they were for something, but that didn't seem to matter right now. I looked right back into Rosalie's black eyes, that is, the eyes that were no longer golden, as they were in my dream.

Because that what it was, just a dream.

"Rosalie," I said, ignoring the offered clothes, "take me."

Rosalie froze. She looked at me for a second, blinked, straightened up and crossed her arms.

Now I knew this wasn't a dream. No matter how terrible the consequences, in a dream, at least, she would come to me. In a dream, she wouldn't withdraw like that. She was always pulling back in reality. She was always distancing herself from me when I was awake.

This wasn't a dream.

"I'm ..." she began cautiously, then restarted. "I don't know what you mean."

I looked at her. Wasn't it obvious what I wanted? I guess not, I thought dully, I guess I'll have to make it plain enough for her to understand.

I pulled my hair back from my neck and put my head on the pillow, lying down on top of the bed.

I looked at her. "Rosalie," I repeated, "take me." It'd probably be easier for her to take me if I was lying down on the bed. I realized that I was dressed, or, more correctly, _not_ dressed exactly as I was in my dream, but things were happening so differently here, because ...

Rosalie didn't move.

"I don't know if you know what you're saying," Rosalie said quietly, "or I don't know if I know what you mean." Then she paused and grimaced. "Or both, so, would you please explain exactly what you do mean?"

I sighed.

"You promised, Rosalie," I said sadly. "You promised. You promised you would kill me if this were a dream, and it was, and I know you want my blood more than anything, and I won't need it anymore when I'm dead, so just take me, right now; take every last drop of blood, and let me die, because ..." I was so calm up to this point, but now it was getting harder to breathe. "Because I can't go on any more. So just take me now, Rosalie, so you don't have to be burdened with me anymore."

"Ah, yes," Rosalie said carefully. "So when you say 'take me' you were talking in the sense of earlier today ... that is to say, to drink your blood, yes?"

I looked at her quizzically. "What else would I mean?"

"Hm. Yes, of course. Now I understand: for you, that's all that means. Well. Thank you for your offer, but, as I have explained to you, I do not ..."

"Rosalie," I shouted in frustration, "look!" I coughed. "It doesn't matter anymore, okay? I won't tell anybody, and it'll be a waste, so just get off your high horse and do it. _You promised!"_

"I made no such promi-..."

"_You did!" _I screamed. _Ouch!_ I winced. Now my head hurt, too.

Rosalie's face hardened.

"You promised," I whispered.

"I think," Rosalie said, "you need to put on your night clothes, and I think you need to go back to sleep, and we'll talk about this tomo-..."

"_Tomorrow!"_ I screamed. I started coughing in earnest now. I shouldn't have screamed, I guess, but I was sick and tired of ... well, everything. I curled into a ball and squeezed my eyes shut as I coughed.

I felt my upper body being lifted up off the bed into a sitting position as I coughed. When the coughing subsided I looked to see Rosalie sitting on the chair by the bed holding me upright. She held out a cup to me. The smell of honey wafted off of the liquid inside.

"What's the point, Rosalie?" I asked, irritated.

"If it doesn't matter either way, then it won't matter if you do take this," Rosalie responded firmly.

"Can't have a girl coughing while you're drinking her dry?" I asked, my voice filled with sarcasm. I coughed again, which weakened my argument.

Rosalie grimaced and looked away. "Something like that," she whispered.

I sighed, but took the cup, and carefully took a small sip.

It worked wonders immediately, as it had done the last time. But it was still miraculous how the liquid seemed to attach itself to my insides, soothing the rawness I felt inside. Everything inside felt a slight buzz from the liquid, and then it all went numb.

Rosalie switched cups on me. More water. I just shook my head as I took it. I had no idea how anyone could get their jollies out of cleaning up mess after mess like this, but there was just no talking to that set look on Rosalie's face.

I drank some water, following Countess Rosalie's decree. I wonder if she'd be taking a bath tomorrow morning in "hot water" that nobody was allowed to touch. I wonder if I'd be in a large sack. I wonder if she'd throw my remains in the stove to make soap.

"Are you able to dress yourself? Or do you need help?" Rosalie asked, indicating the panties and PJs beside me.

I put on the clothes. I saw that Rosalie looked really uncomfortable; she wasn't looking at me at all.

"All dressed now," I said. "You happy?"

Rosalie looked back at me. "You put your undergarments on backwards," she said. What? Does she have X-ray vision or something?

"Wouldn't be the first time," I answered carelessly, staying right where I was. I didn't care.

But apparently Rosalie did. She just hovered there for second, and then she undressed me and then started to put my panties on me the right way this time.

"Of all the ..." I said. "That really bothers you, doesn't it?"

Rosalie finished dressing me and withdrew to her chair.

"All the things that happen tonight, and you just can't stand that my panties are on backward." I shook my head in disbelief.

"They'd become uncomfortable after a while if they stayed like that," she scolded. Well, she tried to sound scolding, but she also couldn't hide her embarrassment.

She quickly passed me the first cup, helpfully raising it to my lips before I could reply to her.

I carefully took in a few sips of the liquid, and it when down my throat like syrup. I handed the cup back to her, fighting to command my arms to give her the cup. My arms seemed to have turned into wet spaghetti noodles.

The cup didn't quite make it, but I did control its fall onto the bed between us. It even landed right side up, so at least something happened right today.

I hissed at myself and my lack of motor control.

Rosalie took the cup off the bed from my numb hands.

"Thank you," she said calmly.

Rosalie handed me the cup of water, and I finished that. I managed to hand her back to cup ... with her hands meeting mine half-way.

"Now can we do this?" I asked her.

"Now," Rosalie answered, "you can sleep."

I found myself bundled in the new blanket, tucked into bed.

"Rosalie, you just don't get it, do you? What? Do I have to draw you a picture? I go through Hell all day, and then sleep is, like, way worse, but no! Then I wake up, and that's even worse!"

"You say sleep is all like that or something, whatever you said," I spit out. "But it's not! If sleeping is like this, I don't want to go to sleep! And if waking up is like when I wake up, I don't want to wake up! So please spare me the lecture on how I can start over tomorrow, because I can't. I don't know what's real anymore, and I don't know which is worse, so just kill me now, okay?"

"No," said Rosalie.

"What's the problem?" I asked with annoyance. "You're gonna kill me anyway, so just do it now!"

"No," Rosalie said again.

"Arrrrgh!" I shouted. "What the Hell kind of vamp are you anyway? You're all like, _ooh, scary, 'I'm going to kill you!'_ but then you ... just ... don't! And the way you treat me it's all like ..."

I stopped here. I didn't know anymore how she treated me, because I didn't know the difference between my dreams and reality any more. I didn't know what I thought she thought and what she was actually doing any more.

I didn't know anything any more.

"Please, Rosalie," I begged, "just kill me. I can't stand this any more, and I just want it to stop."

"But it won't," Rosalie responded sadly.

"What?" I asked utterly confused by the look on her face.

"If I were to kill you now," she said, "I would be suborning your suicide," she said. "You know, there's a special circle in Hell reserved for those who commit violence to themselves, and do you know what happens there?"

I sighed.

"What happens there," she continued, "is that every missed chance that person had is shown to them, over and over again. What's worse, it's shown what would have happened if you had continued to live, how you would have helped somebody, or saved somebody's life, but then the reality is shown, that, because you are dead, because you chose to die, all these terrible things followed. Every one who loved you is brought before you, too. Your father would be placed in front of you, tears coming from his eyes, telling you how much he misses you now, over and over again, for all Eternity."

"If I killed you now," she concluded quietly, "it wouldn't stop; I would only be sending you to a place where every worst thing that ever happened to you would go on without cessation, and, perhaps worse, all the joys and hopes you would have experienced would be shown to you, but you would never be allowed to sample them, whereas if you had lived, they all would have been yours."

"Rosalie," I said just as firmly, "you are describing to me exactly what I'm going through _right now._ What you're saying to me can't be any worse than now, and _it's not_ going to get any better. It just isn't, so, just _please ..."_

"So you've had a couple of accidents in bed." Rosalie's reasoning voice interrupted me. "Certainly embarrassing, but nothing over which to extinguish one's life."

"It's not that, Rosalie," I said. "Well, not only that," I grimaced to her reproachful face. "It's what I've been dreaming. It's just so real, don't you understand that, Rosalie? I don't know anymore what's real and what isn't, and I don't ..."

I swallowed hard and looked away from that perfect face.

"Do you know the worst part of my dream, Rosalie? Can I tell you what was the worst?" I pleaded.

Her silence was the only answer.

"The worst part," I whispered, "was that you were _so happy!_ You were just so happy, Rosalie, and I was just ..." my throat got stuck. "Oh, God!" I gulped. "I was just so happy for you, Rosalie." I shook my head. "I was just so happy for you."

Two more tears wet my pillow. _Another thing to burn, _I thought, hating my now-human-again weakness.

"And that didn't tell you that you were dreaming?" Rosalie asked with a raised eyebrow.

"But it didn't have to be a dream. It doesn't. Don't you understand? You could just ..." I looked away from those not-filled-with-joy eyes.

"I don't understand," Rosalie said quietly. "Would you explain, please? You've told me your dreams before, tell me what's troubling you now ... maybe we can work through this despair of yours?"

I dared a glance at her. Concern radiated from her. I buried my head under my pillow. Telling her all about _this _dream? About her? And me?

The embarrassment just might kill me, but what would be worse is if _it didn't kill me,_ and there would be Rosalie _knowing_ and me, being alive knowing that she _knew_, and her avoiding me, giving me looks, shaking her head at me, for, like, forever.

Ugh.

"No," I finally responded, firmly.

"Well, then, that's my answer, too. If you don't tell me what's so important that you have to die, then I'm not going to assist your suicide." She added firmly: "I wouldn't do that, anyway."

"_Jeez!" _I shouted, throwing my pillow aside. "What does a girl have to do to get herself killed around here?"

"Actually," Rosalie arose and started putting out the lamps, one by one. "It's been a rather difficult job keeping you alive around here, hasn't it? If it's not a walk in the snow, _in socks,_ then it's strangling yourself with your own sheets? Or maybe a swim in the river after playing tag with wolves? Your ability to find death in the safest of places is truly astounding."

"Yeah, well," I said, rolling my eyes in the darkness, "you're good at everything else, what else could I bring to the relationship?"

Rosalie was silent for a while, and I wondered if I had gone too far. I wondered if she had read more into that statement than what I meant. Whatever I meant.

Which reality was this again?

"Hope," she finally answered in a whisper.

"Well, Rosalie," I said, "I'm plum out of hope, so why don't you just ..."

I felt Rosalie put something soft into my arms, and I felt cotton on my cheek. _My sweater ..._ and it still smelled of her.

"Why don't _you_ just sleep now, and we can talk about this when you've recovered your bearings a bit?" Rosalie's question wasn't so much of a question as it was a command.

"Oh, and this is supposed to make me feel all better, is it?" I demanded.

"I've noticed it gives you comfort, yes," Rosalie answered placatingly.

"So I'm some little girl you can throw her binkit at make her take her nap time?" I asked hotly.

"'Binkit'?" Rosalie asked in confusion.

"Do you see me as some little girl?" I demanded, not letting it go.

"No, you're not a little girl;" Rosalie answered, "you're a big ... what are you doing?"

What I was doing was struggling out of the bundling Rosalie had wrapped me in.

"So, I'm a big girl, huh?" I said as I struggled with my confinement. "Oof!" I exhaled as I gave the blankets another heave. Rosalie sure wrapped me up tightly.

"Yes ..." she said hesitantly, "that doesn't explain ..."

"You gittin' in this bed with me?" I asked.

"No, of course not," she said.

"Well, _fine!"_ I snarled, finally freeing myself of my constraints. I got up shakily and stumbled my way around where I thought the chair was, I had to grab ahold of the shirt Rosalie was wearing by the shoulder and it, and my swaying, swung me right into Rosalie's lap.

It wasn't what I'd call a graceful maneuver, but it got the job done.

I put my head on her cold shoulder and wrapped my arms around her smooth neck.

"Um," Rosalie said.

I couldn't stop the smile that forced it's way onto my face. I didn't want to. _Prim and proper Rosalie said 'um'!_ This, definitely, was a victory for me to record in my journal, and she could read that note as many times as she wanted to. Serves Miss Nosey right!

"What!" I demanded. "I'm a big girl. You said we'll talk after I sleep, I told you I couldn't sleep without you holding me, but, no, Miss _'Oh, I'm too whatever to get into bed with you' _Hale can't handle that, so here I am. Besides, can't have me strangling myself in the sheets or peeing on them, again, thanks to you and all that water you gave me. Problems?"

"Well, ..." Rosalie began.

"_Didn't think so!"_ I snarled.

Rosalie sighed. "You make this _all so hard!"_

"Oh, Rosalie Hale, poor vampire me!" I moaned sarcastically, closing my eyes, very comforted and comfortable, resting on her lap, my soft body molded into her solid one.

"You have _no _idea!" she growled. But she then wrapped an arm over my shoulder, providing support for my head, and the other encircling my legs and bottom, resting her hand on my lower back.

It felt ... I don't know anymore, given what I've been dreaming. It felt motherly. It felt tender. It felt sweet. It felt ...

I sighed in a breath of her. "Rosalie," I began, "why are you ..."

"Can't have you loosening your grip and breaking your head open before the morrow, now can we?" she demanded tightly.

"Yeah," I answered, "that would be a _real shame ... _and a first: me getting my way instead of you getting yours."

"It would be a real shame," Rosalie chided, "and is that how you see it? The only way you can advance your aims is to subvert mine?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ!" I murmured, smirking to myself, pleased that she couldn't whack me, being all tied up as she was, holding me.

She didn't, but she shifted her shoulder, forcing my head down into a little bow.

I sighed. She always had to win, didn't she? Even when she couldn't possibly win, she still won.

"Yeah, yeah," I complained softly into her shoulder. "Well, you enjoy your little victory now, 'cause starting tomorrow? We're gonna start playin' by _my_ rules!"

"Your rules, is it?" Rosalie asked amused.

"Yup," I replied nonchalantly.

"The law girl is now invoking her executive mandate. This should be entertaining."

"Yup," I said again.

"Actually ..." she said, still sounding pleased at her little head-bowing victory and the thought of me laying down the law. I felt her reach out to the bed and rewrap me in the blanket. "You'd freeze if you stay in my embrace without some covering," she explained.

It was quiet for a moment. She was so cool, but that actually was nice, given that the fire was making the cabin a sauna, the blanket rewarmed the cool bits of my body pressed against the clothes she wore.

"As long as you don't mind adding this blanket to the burn pile after I pee all over it, since you can't seem to get me to the potty in time," I mumbled, falling deeper into the restful not-caring of sleep.

"Hm, yes, burning a blanket or resuscitating a girl succumbing to hypothermia ... the former seems a smaller price to pay."

"What happened this time, Rosalie?" I asked, feeling my eyebrows crease in confusion.

"I was ... distracted ... again ..." Rosalie responded hesitantly.

I think my eyebrows touched. "How could you be? Weren't you right here? What distracted you?"

Rosalie didn't answer.

That woke me right up.

"You were in my dream!" I exclaimed, looking up from her shoulder.

I couldn't see anything in the blackness, but I felt her stiffening.

"I have no idea what you're talking abou-..." Rosalie indignantly tried to deny what I was saying, but I saw right through her.

"You read my mind!" I shouted, and I felt Rosalie wince away from me, so I spoke more softly, but still very excitedly. "You read my mind, and then you put yourself in my dream! You did! Oh, my God, Rosalie, you were there! You really ..."

Rosalie sighed and put her hand to my head, gently resting it against her shoulder. "No," she answered definitively, "I didn't do this." Then she said more kindly: "You may have dreamed of me, I suppose, but I didn't manipulate what you dreamed. You dreamed what you dreamed, that is all."

"No, Rosalie, you were there!" I held onto my position fiercely. "You were there, and you called me 'Lillian'! And you said ..."

I felt the laughter bubble through Rosalie's body.

"'Lillian'?" She exclaimed. "Why would I call you that? You aren't me; I'm not you. That's not your name at all! Again, you were so very wrong. Besides, what if we were to come across others? That name is my alias, not yours. Two companions named 'Lillian'? Much too noticeable. No, my dear girl, that's not it at all."

"It was 'Lillian'!" I said petulantly. "You said."

Rosalie sighed. "Look, sleep now, and tomorrow I will show you the word 'Lillian' in the dictionary to demonstrate how ill it befits you. Your new name is not 'Lillian.' You'll still need to earn your true name, prescient dreams notwithstanding."

This hurt. But then I realized something else.

"Rosalie!" I said, struggling to lift my head against her immovable hand. It didn't work: my head stayed glued to her shoulder. "The Volturi, they're after you ... and the Cullens!"

"Yes," she said, "any interaction with mortals, other than the _usual,"_ she added distaste to the last phrase, "is forbidden, but not to worry, I have contingencies in place."

"No, Rosalie! It's not that! They called you, um, they called you 'eaters of something not nice.' You and the Cullens! They're going to kill you for that! We have to warn them!" I cried, growing distressed.

"What _we_ have to do right now is that _we _have to sleep. Right now." Rosalie commanded authoritatively, nestling me closer to her in her embrace.

I was concerned before, but her hugging me like this? It felt nice.

It felt really, really nice.

I felt the line between reality and my dreams blurring into a cloudy nothing that I couldn't distinguish anymore.

And I didn't care.

"You will warn them?" I queried, closing my eyes again, nuzzling her shoulder with my cheek.

"Passing your message along is right up on the top of my to-do list," Rosalie said quietly but exasperatedly.

"So you're gonna go back to them afterwards?" I asked curiously ... and a bit sadly.

Rosalie was silent.

"Rosalie ..." I began.

I felt her chest go up and go back down with her sigh.

"What're yuh gonna do afterwards?" I asked. I felt the medicine of her honeyed voice, or whatever it was stealing over even my ability to speak.

She couldn't be on her own, right? She probably had never been on her own. Her, being on her own? Wouldn't she be lonely? Who would she have to boss around?

"This, really, is so far out of what concerns you, I really don't know how to dignify it with any answer at all." I could just feel Rosalie's impatience with me. "What you need to do now is to give that pretty head of yours a rest _by sleeping."_

"Yuh really thing I'm pretty?" I asked incredulously.

"Yes," she responded.

"That's nice." I smiled. "Ya know, nobody else things I'm pretty."

"That you are unable to say the word 'thinks' just proves that you're asleep already." Rosalie's voice was a bit testy now.

"Hey, now! Don' make me come over here and kick yur butt!" I warned her. She definitely didn't want a piece of me, I tell ya! It was a good thing she was holding me down, 'cause otherwise she would've gotten a whuppin', what, with her lip and all.

"You already are 'over here' and I actually am more than a bit fearful of what you might damage in your current state."

She did sound a little bit scared, so that was nice to hear.

"Yeah," I said pleased, "I'd bust up the table or chairs pretty good, wouldn't I?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of internal organ damage or you breaking your own bones ..."

I growled. "Jes' you wait. Remind me when today is tomorrow, and I will definitely kick your butt."

"All right," she answered easily, "when 'today' is 'tomorrow', I'll remind you of that. I'll even remind you to make your own rules ... when 'today' is 'tomorrow', but you? 'Kicking my butt,' as you say? That will only be happening in another one of your dreams."

I knew that somehow she was making fun of me or teasing me, but I couldn't figure it all out. I was just too tired, anyway. Too tired and too comfy in Miss Teasy-Mocky-Vampy's arms.

"Well, you say I'm asleep now, right? Then this is a nice dream, you holdin' me." I answered, my smile returning.

"Sleep now, please, before you say something else you probably will not remember in the morning," Rosalie pleaded.

"So I can say anything I want to, and it'll be okay?" I challenged.

Hm. And I thought to myself, _Self!_ 'cause that's what I call myself when I'm talking to myself, _self,_ I sez, _now I can say it!_

Rosalie was on to me: "Go," she enunciated each word, "to," with displeasure, "sleep."

"I can't," I whined, chickening out at her imperious tone.

Rosalie sighed, then very softly sang a lullaby my grandmother sang to me, years and years ago:

_Guten Abend, gute natch, mit Rosen bedacht ..._

And with her cradling me in her strong arms, with me wrapped in the toasty warm blanket? I was out before she reached the second line, but I wondered ... was 'rosen' ... did that mean Roses?

Whatever it meant, I hoped I dreamed of her again, 'cause this time, I was gonna push _her_ into the river.

Let's see how she likes _that!_

* * *

**Chapter end notes: **

Not in the purview of this or the last chapter, but I do address the question of the Cullen's lifestyle as to how other vampires might consider it an abomination worthy of eradication in my blog at twilight-dad(dot)blogspot(dot)com. The title of the entry is "Cullen's 'noble' choice?"

A 'binkit' is a sure way to help ease a child (or dinosaurs) to sleep (a binkit is also sometimes called a 'blanky' or 'blanket'), especially ones concerned about scary monsters. Failing that, Brahm's Lullaby, of course, is guaranteed to put a sleepy (and, erhm, 'medicated') girl of Germanic descent to bed. Works every time.

Now, as for hugging vampires for solace ... Usually not very successful, in fact, a study of literature shows that ... hm? What? You are telling me that all literature published these days say hugging vampires is sweet and comforting?

Le sigh.

This chapter has provided inspiration for the writer MazingEnglishGirl's "Take Me; Leave Me" chapter in her story Fools in Love.


	52. A Hair

**Chapter summary:** I really, really, really didn't know that combing her hair could ... well, I just wish I could do something right for once, is all.

* * *

I awoke quickly, finding my bearings, quickly, because I had to go. Now.

It was the daytime. Maybe the morning? I was bundled back in the bed. Rosalie's scent was strong around me, but I realized that it was coming from my sweater that was right beside me.

I quickly pried myself out of the bed and blanket, which seemed to take _way _too much time.

I ran toward the triptych, where I heard sounds of bathing, the mirrors showing me a desperate girl racing past them, and I called out as turned the corner, "Rosal-..."

And I stopped. I stopped cold. Because you know that painting? "Venus on the Half-Shell" or whatever it's called?

She really had to quit taking every beautiful thing in the world and topping them all so effortlessly.

Golden eyes regarded me regally, then she asked through gritted teeth: "Wurs zhe fihre?"

That's when I realized I had been standing there like a gaping idiot for, I don't know, fifteen hours? Just standing there staring at her.

I shut my mouth (yes, my jaw had hit the floor), gulped (luckily my drool hadn't leaked out all over; _that_ would have left a nice impression), and reconnected my brain.

"Um, what? Oh!" I said. Yes, I'm a genius. "I'm sorry, but I really, really have to go!"

Rosalie closed her eyes for a second, collecting herself, her face actually dropping. I could almost read in her expression the burden I was on her.

I couldn't even let her take a bath in peace, could I? I hated myself again.

"I'm sorry," I mumbled.

But Rosalie reopened those golden eyes of hers and held up one finger.

I nodded in understanding. She put down the shampoo bottle and picked up a pitcher of water, quickly rinsing off the soap from her body.

But why wasn't she breathing?

Oh, yeah, I realized: my tears and my accident from last night. I probably stunk to high heaven to her. I took a quick, furtive sniff of myself as she continued to rinse.

Yup. Stinky.

I looked back to see Rosalie finish rinsing. She was doing her feet now, first one foot, which she then carefully and gracefully placed outside the tub basin, and then the other, and I couldn't help but notice as she did this that she has _cute toes._

I blushed something fierce at my thoughts, but thankfully, Rosalie didn't notice, for she was picking up a towel and was then drying herself.

This seemed to take absolutely no time at all. She just did one pass over herself, and she was dry. It wasn't that she was doing it super fast, it was just that there seemed to be no water on her skin, or something.

More magic from the goddess Rosalie.

But her hair was still wet, so at least there was one thing not supernatural about her.

She dressed herself very quickly. One second she was the envy of the goddess Venus, and the next second she was in jeans and a tee putting live coals in the pail.

She scooped me up and we were flying through the forest, but something was bugging me. She didn't put on a brassiere, but did I see her not put on panties? It all happened so fast, I wasn't sure either way.

She deposited me in the outhouse, leaving and returning with Belle Fourche river water, heating the place with its steam as the candle illuminated my own very little private part of the world ... that Rosalie was always there with me.

She was silent the whole time, my golden-eyed guardian. But I reflected on it. Every moment now I was with her, and when I wasn't with her, I was _missing_ her.

I had to admit that to myself. When she was gone, I thought of her all the time, and I _missed her._

I didn't know what to do with this revelation, so I did my business, which needed my immediate attention anyway, and then she did hers on me, washing my private areas clean.

But she still wasn't breathing.

We raced back to the cabin, and she deposited me by the basin; thankfully by the triptych side. A lacquered image of a lark ascending looked back at me. She pointed at the basin, and I nodded again.

I don't know. I guess I could speak when she couldn't, but somehow it felt more natural to be quiet when she was. It was like I was struck dumb by her silence.

I started taking off my nighttime clothes and throwing them down beside me in a pile as Rosalie collected the pitchers, stepping outside, leaving the door open, because she was gone and back again in an instant. She closed the door then filled the pitchers with hot water from the big pot on the stove, setting them down by me.

She pointed, again, this time a little imperiously, I might add, to the basin.

"Okay," I whispered, and then I winced. Yeah, it felt definitely wrong for me to be speaking, my whisper seemed to shatter the quiet of the cabin.

I knelt down by the basin. I'd shampoo my hair first.

Rosalie picked up a towel and started rubbing her hair vigorously. I looked toward her as I absently reached for the shampoo and picked it up.

I gasped in shock. It was a good thing I was kneeling down, because you know when you pick up something, thinking that it was going to be heavy, and it doesn't weigh anything? If I had been standing up, I would have toppled like one of those trees that Rosalie felled, because the full container of shampoo was now almost empty.

I looked again at Rosalie, drying her hair, and then looked back at the shampoo bottle. I unscrewed the top and looked in. About two thirds of the shampoo was gone.

I set to work, washing my hair. Very thoroughly.

...

The bath felt very, very good. By the time I finished bathing, Rosalie was standing in front of the mirrors, combing her hair. I had wrapped myself in my towel because my clothes weren't laid out for me this time by the basin.

I looked at Rosalie.

"It doesn't go away, does it? The smell of scotch in your hair?" I asked.

Rosalie continued to look right into her eyes as she combed her hair. It looked like she was examining herself critically. It looked like she was staring herself down. It looked like she was daring her reflection to try to look more beautiful than herself, so that she could smash the mirrors. She looked that dangerous.

I suddenly thought, does she ask the mirror every day who is the most beautiful in the land? I fervently whispered to her in my mind: _you are, Rosalie. You are the most beautiful._

After a moment of her self-examination, her eyes flashed black. Just like that. Her face didn't change expression at all, but her posture stiffened a little, as if she were bracing herself against my scent. Against her natural inclination that I begged so hard for her to indulge in last night.

She said: "It used to be ever-present, no matter how often I washed myself. But then Edward recently told me something very wise. I wasn't, then, in a position to hear it, but it helps me some now. Actually, it helps quite a bit."

"What did Edward tell you?" I asked.

I don't think I recall her mentioning Edward positively before.

"He said," she said, "that the bad memories don't go away. And for us, that is true: they don't. But he said that you keep adding different experiences and memories so that the bad becomes diluted by the good. So there's no time to dwell on the bad and the pain, because you have so many other experiences in front of you."

"But I brought it up again, hurting you, didn't I?" I asked to her reflection in the mirror.

Rosalie resumed combing.

"Yes and no." Rosalie's eyes shifted to mine in the mirror. "Yes, you asked, but no, because I chose to go down that path. I chose to share that with you."

"Why?" I asked, confused. Why would she share her past with me?

"Because ..." Rosalie began, but my waving silenced her.

"Never mind, never mind," I said quickly.

She said you're not supposed to ask why-questions. I had a brain. I could use it. I'd figure it out with time.

Rosalie raised an eyebrow quizzically. "Are you sure?" She asked.

"Yeah ..." I said, but then corrected quickly: "I mean _yes, _I'm sure."

Rosalie's expression didn't change, but she looked a little bit pleased, and a little bit proud, but also a little bit concerned.

Another thing for me to learn why. I wondered if these learnings and lessons ever ended ... or ever got any easier.

I watched Rosalie combing. "May I?" I asked.

Rosalie combed a bit more, fanned out her hair with her fingers, combed once more, and then handed me the comb. I looked at it. There wasn't any dandruff nor one single hair in it.

I put it to her hair and started combing. Her back stiffened, and she she hissed in a shocked breath.

I stopped. "What's wrong, Rosalie?" I asked in surprise.

"Nothing," she gasped. She held herself very stiffly.

"But you're ..." I started. "Am I doing something wrong?" I tried again.

She relaxed just a little bit then explained: "I thought you were going to comb _your _hair."

"Oh," I said. "You don't want me touching you?"

I tried to ask that factually.

"Well, you surprised me, and I had to stop my natural inclination to tear you to pieces."

"Why would you want to do that?" I asked.

Rosalie sighed, and relaxed a bit more, so I dared to continue combing. She didn't seem to mind now.

"Because only one thing surprises a vampire: its enemy, so the self-defense mechanism kicks in. We are very much reduced, very reactive creatures. Being eternal means being eternally in the moment, always primed to act or to react; always on edge, as it were."

I took in her words as I combed. Always being on edge? No wonder why she missed sleep so much!

"What's an enemy of a vampire?" I asked.

"Another vampire." Rosalie raised an eyebrow as she answered, as if she were stating the obvious.

I let the edge of my palm brush against Rosalie's hair as I combed it. I thought it would be cold and hard. Sharp, maybe, you know? It wasn't. It had dried, and it was soft and silky to the touch. Like her scent, it felt so comforting.

"But you and the Cullens were ..." I began. Rosalie gave me a sharp look in the mirror but didn't say anything, so I continued: "Well, you were together."

Rosalie closed her eyes for a second, then reopened them when she answered. "The Cullens are ... _unusual." _I think she wanted to use a different word. "Almost all vampires are nomadic, solitary, and if any two meet, then usually ... well." Rosalie looked away from me.

I combed for a second. "That sounds ... that sounds like a terrible way of living ... I mean, existing."

"_Yes,"_ Rosalie's eyes shifted back to mine in the mirror and penetrated mine with a stare with an intensity that matched her response.

"Oh," I said meekly.

But I continued combing, and she relaxed again.

"Nice?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, closing her eyes, relaxing completely. "It reminds me of when I was a human girl and my maid would comb my hair like that, so gently."

She was purring, but it wasn't making me sleepy.

Suddenly her hand flashed out and grabbed my wrist. I looked in surprise at her in the mirror. Her black eyes were staring at me. She looked angry for some reason.

"I think," she said quietly, "you should get dressed."

Her eyes shifted to the image of the bed in the mirror. I looked there, too.

My clothes were laid out there. They must have been there the whole time.

"Oh," I said. "... okay."

She released my wrist, and I went to the bed.

I looked back at her as I changed. She was still there, staring at herself. So still. She didn't look any different, but why did I get the feeling she felt disappointed with herself about something?

She must have been in front of the mirrors for minutes and minutes, looking at herself, thinking to herself, combing herself, everything. It didn't bother her at all.

But then I realized something. I was there for a little while, too. I wasn't looking at myself, yes, but she didn't have to drag me there, either.

Wow.

I went back to her by the mirror.

"So what's on the schedule for today?" I asked. "Besides breakfast," I added, reminding her.

Her eyes shifted to mine in the mirror. "Too much, and not enough," she replied.

"Then I guess we better get started, right?" I looked back at her.

"Yes," she answered. "Comb your hair while I prepare breakfast for you."

"Do I have to look in my eyes while I'm doing it?" I asked.

Rosalie's lips turned down. "No," she said, already in motion. So still in motion. So graceful.

I began combing as Rosalie put out breakfast things. She got out the bread and the eggs. I guess it would be toad in the hole this morning. I wonder if variety was unnatural for her. I mean I guess her diet was unvarying; her days were unvarying.

"Rosalie," I said as I combed.

"Yes?" she concentrated on cutting a _larger_ hole in the bread.

"Is it okay if we do something different than chicken noodle soup tonight?" I asked.

"What did you have in mind?" She put the bread in the pan.

Well, it was good that she didn't have a serious objection to variety, but, actually I didn't have anything in mind at all. Just something different.

"Well, what're my options?" I asked.

Rosalie very gently cracked the egg. But then she reached in the pan and picked out some egg shell, I guess. It takes practice to crack an egg. But she would learn.

Or not need to. If I'm dead, she wouldn't have to cook anymore, I guess.

She looked up from her handiwork.

"I can obtain the ingredients for chicken cordon bleu," she said. "You'll have to prepare the meal yourself, but does that sound fine?"

"That sounds great!" I enthused. Then I felt a twinge of remorse. I was going to make that dish for Pa.

I repressed that feeling with a distraction. "But we'll need a veggie," I said. "Hmmm." I thought. "How about ..." _Ah!_ "Green beans ... can you get green beans and cans of cream of mushroom soup?"

Rosalie smiled. "Yes," she said, then turned back to the stove and flipped the egg and bread with the spatula.

Perfect!

"Breakfast time for the human!" Rosalie sang out happily.

I went back to the table and handed Rosalie the comb. I had faired worse than Rosalie in my combing job, there were a few of my hairs there, but I saw one blond one.

Rosalie saw it, too.

"Ah, well," she shrugged. "It was worth it."

I felt my eyebrows crinkle as she served the toad in the hole. "What was worth what?" I asked, confused.

"You saw my hair on the comb, right?" Rosalie asked.

I nodded.

"You know I'm dead, right?" She asked continuing.

I nodded again, blanching a bit at how calmly she said that.

She waved to her glorious crown of hair.

"This is all I'll ever have anymore. Once a hair goes, it's gone."

"_What?"_ I exclaimed.

"Yes," she said. "Early in my new existence I was going to cut away most of my hair. I just couldn't stand that my 'beauty' was actually my curse that condemned me to this existence, but Esmé stopped me before I could shear myself. She told me it doesn't grow back."

"Oh, my God! Rosalie! I'm so sorry! Why didn't you stop me?" I instantly saw that one hair gone was nothing if you lived, you know, a normal life and it grew back, but when it doesn't grow back, and there you are, a billion years later?

"Like I said," Rosalie answered easily, "it was worth it. I won't have the hair anymore, but you combing my hair? It felt ... nice. And the memory that I do now have was worth the trade."

"But ..." I said helplessly.

"Beauty and happiness, my dear girl," Rosalie said chidingly. "Neither are only skin deep. Neither depend on a hair."

Rosalie turned and got out the tea things, then served me a cup of tea.

I watched her mutely the whole time as she did this. This amazingly beautiful creature. This stunningly beautiful and complex person.

So, when she said I'm beautiful ... was she saying that I looked pretty? Did she only see my soul, and didn't see the plain exterior that everybody else saw? But she _did_ say I look pretty, too.

The beautiful goddess waved to my plate and sat down across from me. "Eat," she commanded.

I ate. I had no idea what any of it tasted like, because I looked at pure beauty, skin deep and all the way down to her _cute toes_ but also through and through, and wondered what she could possibly see in me that was beautiful.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

_Venus on the Half-Shell_ is a novel by Philip José Farmer; _The Birth of Venus _is the painting by Botticelli. Rosalie "looks like one of those Botticelli chicks" which Cher tells Elton in _Clueless,_ which is a modern interpretation of _Emma_ by, yes, Jane Austen. We clear now?

I recall reading the incident where Esmé saved Rosalie from destroying her hair, but I don't recall where. Help from an intrepid (trophy-earning) reader?

This chapter was in part the inspiration for the writer Jocelyn Torrent's "Locks" chapter of her one-shot (*ahem*), that is: story "Rose Read" (pronounced "Rose Red" ... geddit?) (even though "Rosalie" is Latin for "White Rose" ... but there it is).


	53. School in Session

**Chapter summary: **She held me ... while I cried. She held me.

* * *

I ate my breakfast. I finished eating the toad in the hole and drinking my tea. Rosalie watched me the whole time. She didn't look bored, but she didn't look fascinated either.

She looked patient.

But during the meal, she reached into the book bag and started "reading" a book in the super-fast way she does everything. Flip-flip-flip went the pages, but even faster than before.

Of course I looked at the cover as I ate and I received an unpleasant surprise for it. It was the _American Sign Language_ book. Why would she be reading that now?

When I was done eating, Rosalie looked up from the book. "How was it?" she asked.

"Fine," I responded neutrally. I hadn't had coffee in a while, but I still missed the pick-me-up in the morning.

"Hm." Rosalie responded. "Well, would you take care of the dishes? I'd like to finish this, please." Her eyes looked down, indicating the book.

"Okay," I said. "Sure." I was happy to be helping now, even a little bit, instead of always adding to what Rosalie had to do.

I stood.

Rosalie looked up at me. "Do you have to go?" she asked.

"No, I'm fine," I said.

"Please let me know a half-hour or an hour before you need to, okay?"

I got excited at that. "We're going to walk today?"

"Yes," she answered.

I went to the sink. I guess it would be pretty pathetic if you thought about it: me, getting excited about going to the potty. But, in retrospect, it's always been an adventure when I tried to hoof it there, and maybe this time we could do a round trip without a near-death experience or without Rosalie having to carry me part of the way.

I washed my dish and utensils, as I was doing that, I heard the sound of ripping along with the sound of flipping pages. I looked over at Rosalie. She was tearing pages right out of the book!

"Rosalie," I asked shocked, "what are you doing?"

"Preparing your lesson for today," came the even answer. She didn't even look up as she continued breezing through the book. She turned back to the beginning and started going through the pages again, but this time more slowly. Sometimes she would pause and gesture to herself with her right hand held low, out of my sight. She seemed satisfied with what she was doing.

"Rosalie," I said, "you don't have to tear pages out of the book for me to see them. I can see them just fine _in_ the book." Destroying a book like that? What had gotten into her?

Rosalie did look at me then. "Who said anything about you seeing these pages?"

Then she went to the stove, and before I could understand what I was seeing, she threw what she tore out right into the stove. She didn't even undampen the chimney, she just tossed in the pages, and slammed the lid back into place. A puff of smoke escaped with a lick of flame, but Rosalie was back in her seat before the smell of it, diffused in the air, reached my nostrils.

Can't have the woodsy smell of smoke in her perfect hair, I suppose.

"What did you ..." I stammered. "Rosalie, why did you do that? If you didn't want me to see something, you could have just told me not to read the book. I wouldn't have anyway without permission."

"And now you don't have the temptation," she responded coolly.

She was cool, but I was hot. "The temptation? The temptation of what!" I tried not to shout.

Rosalie glared at me from her chair.

I tried to calm down. "Rosalie, that's just ..." I shook my head. I thought this was a free country. I thought you could read whatever you wanted.

Rosalie was unmoved.

"Besides," I said, continuing along a different thread. "What's the whole deal with sign lan-..."

Then I gasped. The plate slipped through my fingers, clattering into the sink. It didn't break. Good thing, I suppose, because I would have probably grabbed for it and cut myself. We didn't need more distractions now.

I drew in a sharp breath, and turned, facing her full-on. "You're never going to speak to me again!" I accused.

"What?" Rosalie replied angrily.

"You're going to teach me sign language, and you'll never speak to me again, just like you said the day before yesterday!" I shot back just as angrily.

_Just like her!_ I thought, furious. She starts speaking, and pretty much the first thing she says is that she'll never talk to me again! And now she's putting that plan into action. _That meanie!_

That meanie rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Oh, for goodness sake! I know you've got a brain in there; use your head for something other than to hang your hat!" she said disparagingly.

"What?" I asked confused. Besides, I didn't like wearing hats. You were supposed to wear them, but you were supposed to go to church on Sundays, too. I did neither.

I mean, Rosalie looked nice and all, wearing that nice hat that she wore, but I wasn't Rosalie.

But I don't think she was actually talking about hats, anyway.

"Why would I be teaching you sign language?" Rosalie demanded.

"I thought you didn't ask why-questions," I countered.

Rosalie closed her eyes for a second and blew out a sigh. She reopened her eyes, and brought her finger to her temple and tapped it while saying, "Think!"

Now it was my turn to be exasperated. "Does everything have to be a mind game?"

"Yes," she answered for once directly, but not to my liking: "everything has to be a mind game. Get used to playing it. So why would I be teaching you sign language?"

"Oh, come on, Rosalie! Why can't you just tell me? You know, cut me a break?" I demanded.

Rosalie paused and looked at me. Her tone changed. She was quiet. "I can tell you," she said. "I can cut you a break. But in so doing, am I really helping you? What do you learn when people tell you something? _Nothing!"_

She said the last word quietly, yet intensely.

"Rosalie ..." I said, trying to be reasonable. "That's how school works: they tell you stuff, and then you tell them back in the tests. That's how people learn stuff."

"No," Rosalie said, shaking her head. "That's how people are _schooled, _but what do they learn in school? _Nothing._ A person learns something when they answer questions themselves, when they find their own answers. And then, they start asking questions. Do you know what those people are called, the people who ask questions?"

I crossed my arms and waited for the lecture to be over. Rosalie glared at my posture, but pushed through anyway. She was going to make me hear this, apparently for my own good. Whether I wanted it or not.

"Those people are called revolutionaries, innovators, _great thinkers._ All Socrates ever did was to ask questions that nobody else would, and he is considered one of the greatest thinkers in the world!" She smiled slightly as she said this, and I could hear the fervor in her voice. _She believed this._

Then she looked at me, sighed, and said sadly: "You could be that, a great thinker. You ask questions nobody else does, ... when you are brave enough to do it. All you have to do is push past your fears and misconceptions, you already know the questions to ask. You already know the answers."

I felt myself stiffening. It felt like she was scolding me with this praise, and I didn't like it one bit.

"So," she said gently, "let's start over. Why would I be teaching you sign language?"

I wanted to walk around the table and scream in her face. But instead I spat out the tense words through clenched teeth with all the control I could muster: _"I ... don't ... know!"_

I felt my fingernails trying to dig their way through my palms; that's how tightly my hands were balled into fists, and I was standing so rigidly, just vibrating with rage.

Rosalie closed the book, placing it on the table, and looked at me quietly.

"So much for starting over," she said regretfully.

She sighed quietly, then her face filled with determination. She got up from her chair and walked over to angry, fuming me.

I glared at her coming toward me. _I_ was angry at _her; _she couldn't scare me.

"Rosalie, what are you ..." I began.

She reached out and pulled me into her. She placed her hand on my head and gently forced it into her shoulder, nestling it there, her other arm encircled my back, drawing me completely into a solid, gentle, irresistible hug.

I tried to resist at first. I tried to push away. I couldn't. This wasn't me in my dream last night; I didn't have that kind of strength to equal hers. She just held me, and the two of us stood by the sink, her, holding me into her.

I wanted to be angry at her. I _am_ angry at her. I ha-... that is, I'm _so_ _angry _with her.

She just said nothing, holding me. She didn't try to console me with words; she didn't rock me gently. She just held me.

_No._ I won't cry. _ I won't!_

I gasped in a breath of rose-scented air. The gasp turned into a quiet sob.

So much for not crying. I felt my tears staining her shirt, and I felt the strength of her as she held me, her honeysuckle and rose scent comforting me as much as her embrace, and I gave myself over to her and cried.

...

"Did you wish to sit down?" Rosalie asked me quietly.

Do you know how when you're pressed against somebody you can feel their voice vibrating in their chest? I felt almost nothing in her when she spoke. And the way she breathed? It sounded like a wind in a great distance going through a tunnel, like she were a mountain, and she had been hollowed out inside.

I nodded my head in a _yes_ against her cool, smooth shoulder. My tears had eventually stopped, and my sobs had returned to gasps and then to regular breathing, but I still didn't trust my voice.

"All right," she said evenly, "but you need to let go of me to do that."

I don't know how my hands had wrapped around her back.

I let her go.

Rosalie sat me down at the table and fixed me a cup of tea. It was as if this were the most normal thing in the world: me crying, and Rosalie fixing me a cup of tea.

I guess, actually, it kind of was.

Rosalie passed me another hanky, and I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. I put it down on the seat beside me, underneath the table, out of sight. I couldn't hide my emotions, but it'd be nice to hide the aftermath from the nice cup of tea Rosalie gave me.

"I'm sorry," I whispered down into my tea.

"What are you sorry for?" Rosalie asked from the other side of the table.

Of course, she couldn't let it go at that, and she always turned off her mind-reading at the most convenient times. 'Most convenient,' like when she wanted me to look embarrassed trying to explain myself to her.

"I'm sorry for crying," I said. I watched the steam from the tea as it made an interesting pattern, and I noticed I was growing to like the smell of Earl Grey.

After a moment Rosalie cleared her throat quietly. I forced my eyes up to look into hers.

"I never disobeyed my parents in anything," Rosalie said, and she looked away from me.

I looked at her. I felt a sadness coming from her that I couldn't understand.

"I always did everything they told me. I tried to make them ... pleased with me, because I knew I could never make them proud of me," she continued quietly. "That just wasn't possible with them."

"But I wish ..." she said. "I wish just in one thing that I could have disobeyed them. My mother told me it wasn't proper for a young lady to cry, and, after she told me that, I never did. But ..."

Rosalie looked down at her hands.

"But I wish I hadn't listened to her. I wish I hadn't obeyed her in this. For if I had cried, maybe ... maybe I wouldn't have been so ... maybe I wouldn't have become ..."

She stopped, and then she looked right at me.

"I may not understand your tears at times," she said quietly, "but I do understand that they are a part of you, and a part of your goodness." Then she said firmly: "You don't need to apologize for crying."

Then she looked away again.

After a moment of silence, she commanded: "Drink your tea."

I realized I had been just sitting here, looking at her. I don't even know if I were breathing. I took a sip of tea. It had cooled a little bit.

I cleared my own throat.

"You know ..." I began.

"No," Rosalie responded quietly, looking back at me. "I don't know."

I sighed. She could be so ... _like this. _So_ Rosalie._ She would open up her heart and let me see the person inside, and then she would just shut me out and be so proper and correct and distant. It was like both were her. It was like they weren't different things about her, but the same thing.

But I saw that she was always working so hard when I felt the _real_ her was trying to speak to me, and I saw how easily she could be cold and angry.

Maybe you had to work really hard to peel back that standoffish layer to see the real person inside.

I wonder if anybody had ever worked that hard. Ever.

I tried again.

"Well," I said, "I never cried this much before now. I wasn't like this at all. In fact, I thought I was reasonable. That things made sense ... you know?" I grimaced. I guess I wasn't supposed to say _'you know,'_ but I pushed forward anyway.

"Then you and the Cullens came, and ..." I paused, thinking. How to say it? "And, well, things didn't make any sense anymore, and I wasn't this reasonable person anymore, able to deal with everything, and ..."

I shrugged. I guess there was nothing to say after the 'and.'

"Were you alive before we came and interrupted your cozy routine?"

Rosalie asked this quietly and sincerely. It didn't sound like she was mocking me. It sounded like she was curious.

"What do you mean?" I asked back.

I had no idea what she was asking. Maybe she would explain it so I could answer something that made sense to her.

"A couple of things," she answered. "The 'things that don't make sense' is us." She pointed at herself and smiled a small smile. "But feeling in control? Perhaps you felt that way because your life was on autopilot? Perhaps you weren't living your life, but simply moving from one thing to the next, an automaton, mindlessly doing what it knows. When we came along, didn't you feel yourself break away from monotony and start to explore, and to discover, to learn, and to ... live? What I saw of you then, I think I saw that in you."

I thought about what she asked for a second.

"A couple of things back at you, Rosalie," I said.

She nodded.

"So it takes you," I waved at her, "to get somebody just going through the motions to live?"

"Not at all!" she looked affronted. "People can choose to experience their life without something so jarring as us. In fact, many people in your 'Big Sky' state do, and have made their mark."

I thought about that for a second, too.

"Okay," I said. "But, so I was 'cozy' before. I don't know about that, but I sure as shooting know how I'm feeling now. And this confusion? Me crying all the time, and ..." here I waved back toward the bed and triptych, "and making a mess of myself? And all that? Is that 'living'?"

Rosalie looked away. "Maybe," she said. Then she looked at me again. "I don't know, because I don't know what it feels like to be alive anymore. No feelings came to me from my human life — except agony — so now all I know of feeling is this." She touched her cheek that looked like it was from a sculpture of Venus. "But maybe you are experiencing all this, because learning is painful. Discovering who you are is painful. A butterfly has to break its way through the chrysalis to be able to spread its wings. Transitioning from quiescence to vibrancy requires effort, oftentimes all the effort you have, and that can be painful."

I snorted. "That's me, the beautiful butterfly."

Rosalie smiled at me faintly. "Perhaps."

I just shook my head.

"So, your choice," her voice became business-like. "What shall we do first? Shall we do the sign language lesson first, or shall we see the beautiful butterfly first?" she asked me with a straight face. I could hear a tinge of humor coloring her voice, however.

Hm. 'Seeing the beautiful butterfly' sounded suspiciously like mirror time.

"How about sign language first?" I said quickly.

Rosalie smiled.

Well, I didn't know any sign language, so she could smile all she wanted to, but maybe the sign language lesson would eat up the mirror time. She thought she was being all clever with the "which one _first"_ questions, trying to hide her scheme from me that she'll try to get me to do _both, _but I know teachers: they always take too long on the first thing, and never get to anything else. Schoolmarm Rosalie may be smart and all, but I didn't come with empty saddlebags, either.

"Okay," Rosalie said easily. "Today you're going to be learning the four most important signs for you, then we can build your vocabulary, as it were, gradually. So let's begin."

And that's what we did: we began.

* * *

**Chapter end notes:**

Of course, Rosalie's very anti-schooling position didn't stop her from getting multiple doctoral degrees, now did it? (Canonical that Rosalie has at least an M.D. and see my story "Rose by a Lemon Tree," ch 3: "Memories and Sight: Edward.")

According to Signing Time, teaching children, including hearing children, sign language gives them a method of expression that can help them communicate their needs better than, e.g., throwing tantrums, alleviating some of the terribleness of the "terrible twos." Signing, the claim continues, contribute to higher IQ scores, quicker adjustment/socialisation, and faster reading comprehension.

Wow!

Anecdotal evidence from my own children supports the facility of sign language in improved communication. And the other claims? Well, proud papa and all that. No need to brag here, please, eh?

So, dear reader, your guesses: Rosalie teaches which "four" signs to her captive student?


	54. Learning Signs

**Chapter Summary: **She remembers last night. All of it. And, with what happened this morning ... couldn't I have stopped myself? I don't know anymore. This is not going according to plan. Not at all.

* * *

I got my notebook and a new ticonderoga from the book bag and sat down across the table from Rosalie.

"What are you doing?" Rosalie asked curiously.

"Well," I said, "school is in session — right? — so I'm going to take notes," I replied. I mean ... wasn't it obvious?

"You don't need to take notes for sign ..." Rosalie paused when she saw my expectant face, then she sighed. "Never mind," she said. See, I knew she'd see it my way.

I opened my notebook and turned to the most recent entry. It was my list of victories that I had written down from Rosalie's dictation. I reread them, savoring them.

Oh, that's right, I was supposed to add a new one! I wrote, 'Victory #3:' ...

... but then I paused. Writing 'Making Rosalie say um' was pretty mean. Especially after that 'um' she held me in her arms through the night.

... Especially after the hug this morning.

I mean, so what! I made her say 'um.' But me reveling in that now? After her being so ...

"What was your third victory?" a musical voice asked over my shoulder.

"Gah!" I cried out. I was lost in my thoughts, and Rosalie had used her magic vampire powers to sneak up behind me unnoticed. I hate that when she does that.

"Uh," I said, sheepishly, "it's not a victory anymore."

I made to erase it, but Rosalie stopped me with her voice: "Well, what was it?"

I shook my head. "It was mean, Rosalie; I don't want to think about it anymore."

"Was it mean, or was it accurate?" She wasn't letting it go.

After a moment of my silence, she asked quietly: "What were you going to write?"

I looked up at her: "I was going to write that I made you say 'um' last night. And worse, Rosalie ... and worse, I was going to enjoy watching you read that every time you looked at my journal, okay? Are you happy now?"

She looked at me in silence.

"See," I said, "I told you I was mean. And after you've been so kind to me then ... and now ... and all I wanted to do was to rub your face in one little slip."

I closed my book. My victories didn't taste so sweet anymore.

Rosalie seemed to be thinking of something else entirely. "You remember that from last night?"

I looked up at her quizzically. Did she think I would forget something right away? Did she think human memory worked that way?

"Yes," I answered simply.

Rosalie's face became thoughtful. "What else do you remember from last night?"

"Well," I said, "everything."

But then I explained, because it looked like she didn't believe me. "I remember you tickled me, and then you wanted to run away, but then you told me I was running away when I stopped you. And we talked about our mothers, and then you told me that terribly sad fairy tale, which was no fair because I thought you were going to talk about God some more, which would have put me right to sleep, but you told me we were each other, and then I had my dream, but you didn't bring me to the outhouse in time because you said you were distracted again, and you told me you wouldn't kill me, even though you told me you would show me how you would, and then you said we weren't each other so my name wasn't Lillian and you laughed at me for that, but then you held me ... right?"

Rosalie's face became more and more grave during my retelling of last night's events. When I finished, she rocked back on her heels, and then walked back to her chair and sat back down.

"Yes," she said with regret, "you remember everything."

"Well," I demanded, "why wouldn't I?"

Rosalie frowned and looked away.

After a moment I asked, "So, are you going to show me how you're going to kill me?"

Rosalie looked back at me and shook her head.

"You are so calm discussing your own death; it's almost as if you're welcoming it," she looked unhappy with me.

"Well," I said, "would you prefer I jump up and down in a panic? I don't think that would help the conversation any."

"Yet you cry at what others may find inconsequential matters," Rosalie countered.

I looked at Rosalie. "Are they inconsequential?" I asked her.

Rosalie looked away. "No," she said quietly.

"Then why did you just say that? You said I shouldn't apologize for crying, but now you're scolding me for it. I don't get that, Rosalie."

"I'm not scolding you for that," Rosalie said quietly. "What I'm trying to do is to understand why you are so cavalier about your own existence. Your life, your self, is the only thing you have, yet you accept your end so easily. It's mystifying, like many things about you are mystifying to me."

"Well, it's not like I can do anything about it," I began. "You're so ..."

Rosalie stood quickly from her chair and shouted her words angrily at me: "Yes, you can!"

"Like what?" I demanded, rising myself.

"Exactly!" Rosalie said.

I closed my eyes for a second. "This is going to be another one of _those_ conversations, isn't it?"

Rosalie let go of her anger and smiled faintly. "When isn't it?" she asked.

I answered right back: "Exactly."

I'm sure her question was rhetorical, but that didn't stop me from parroting her confusing words back at her.

Her smile didn't leave her face. In fact, her face brightened a bit more. It was if she enjoyed this verbal fencing.

But I sure didn't. I frowned at her.

She said: "You won't be able to do anything if you're fatalistic about it, but when you ask 'how' by the mirror you were able to look a bit longer; when you ask 'like what' here, maybe you will find the 'what.'"

"Rosalie," I said, crossing my arms, "you take the cake on being the weirdest kidnapper in the world: you _want _me to get away?"

Rosalie looked me up and down with a superior look on her face. "I _want_ many things. One of those things is for you to be the best you can be, so that when you stand in judgment you can honestly say you did your best."

She concluded quietly: "You won't be able to do that if you give up on anything."

I looked at Rosalie, looking at me so sincerely.

"What if you're wrong, Rosalie?" I asked her.

"Wrong about what?" she asked back, looking puzzled.

"You've been talking about God and Heaven and Hell and everything as if they're real," I looked at that beautiful, angelic face, and pressed forward. "What if they're not? What if, as you've said, now is all we have, and that's it?"

Rosalie crossed her own arms now, and a smile touched her lips, but it looked ... bitter.

"The Augustine wager," she said.

"Rosalie," I said, patiently as I could, "you have to answer the question in a way that I can understand."

"Hm," Rosalie said. "I'll put it another way. You're not the first or only person to ask that question, and it's a similar question I ask myself quite often, what if it's all for naught?"

"No, Rosalie," I said, becoming angry, "you're supposed to be sure about everything, you know? You're supposed to whip out the Bible or something." ... _and make me look like an idiot, but still show me that you know what you're doing, and give me that certainty, at least._ I glared at her as I thought this.

"That's what Faith is for," Rosalie answered my spoken words and my angry thoughts.

"Believing just because somebody says so?" I asked disbelievingly. Rosalie didn't look like the kind of person who would take what anybody told her without tearing it apart. Perfect example: me, and whatever I said.

"No!" she exclaimed angrily. See? Case in point. "Faith is believing what you believe, believing after it's been proved to you or what you've proved to yourself, but then continuing to believe that irrefutation through thick and thin. Doubt attacks faith, not through reasoned arguments but through unreasonable fear."

"So," I said slowly. "So, you believe in Heaven?"

"That's not the question," Rosalie answered. "The question is do you believe in Heaven?"

I shrugged angrily. I wondered what all this had to do with sign language.

Rosalie went to the book bag and pulled out the Bible.

I sighed.

"You wanted me to quote the Bible, I'll quote the Bible to you," she said angrily. She flipped to the back of the Book and read out a passage, spitting out the words to me. It was something about people in white robes being washed in the blood of a lamb.

She snapped the Book closed. "What does that mean to you?" she demanded.

Oh, brother! Another essay question.

I gritted my teeth. "Rosalie, I don't know, okay? I'm not some Bible scholar like you are."

"I'm not asking for your in-depth Biblical analysis," Rosalie responded, "I'm asking what that passage means to _you."_

I tried. I thought about it for a second. "I guess ... those are people in Heaven ... or something?"

"Yes," Rosalie said, "the 'new Heaven and the new Earth' mentioned later, but what if there is, as you argue, no Heaven ... what does this passage mean?"

I looked at her, now totally confused.

"Is it okay if I say I have no idea what you're talking about, Rosalie?" I mean, _like always_, but I had to check so I could maybe head off her anger and shouting.

Rosalie looked at me for a second. "Come with me," she commanded, and walked to the door.

I hesitated. "Uhm, do I need to put on boots?"

"Just stand here by the door," she said curtly.

I went over to her. She handed me the Book, swung open the door, and stepped outside.

The sun was shining: it was a bright, cold morning. The light struck her head, and she became the Angel again, haloed in light.

She looked at me, her eyes burning with a black, coal-like fire, and she said: "Look at me, and listen to the words again as I speak them."

She unbuttoned her shirt. She wasn't wearing a brassiere. The light struck her shoulders and the light reflected from her became almost blinding in its brilliance.

She took off her pants, kicking them off. I was right: she wasn't wearing panties. She was now a column of light. She was a lightning bolt, captured in time, electricity frozen into one place in her utter stillness.

Then she stared at me, a bolt of lightning, a column of white flame, and recited:

"'Who are these wearing white robes, and from whence did they come?' and I said to him, 'My lord, you are the one who knows.' He sayeth unto me, 'These are the ones who have survived the time of tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'"

She stood there, glowing, aflame, for a moment, then with one swoop collected her clothes and came back inside, no longer glowing, but still an angelic goddess, so mind-numbingly beautiful.

She looked at me contemptuously: "I'll spare you the demonstration of being washed in blood."

I watched her silently as she put on her pants. She looked down at her shirt, but instead of putting it on, threw it into my pile of clothes by the basin. She retrieved a new shirt from the neatly folded fresh clothes and put it on.

"'White robes'?" I asked finally. It didn't look like she was wearing a robe. My eyes verified that with no small amount of certainty.

"Put yourself into the sandals of somebody two thousand years ago. 'White robe' could very well have been an euphemism for someone," here she pointed at herself, "clothed in light."

"So ..." Now I was _more_ confused! "You're saying Heaven _doesn't _exist and those people in the Bible are vamp-..." I was shy to say the word around her, but I guess I had to say it. "Vampires?"

"No," she answered, helping me less and less. _"I'm _not saying that, but let us say you don't believe in Heaven, and you've read that passage. What does it suggest to you? Where 'every tear is wiped away'? Vampire don't cry. Where everyone 'lives' forever? Vampires are immortal. 'Clothed in white robes'? You've just seen that. And how many were numbered in that passage?"

"Um," I kind of lost track of the number. "A lot?"

"Yes," she answered, straight-faced: "a lot: one hundred forty-four thousand. And Carlisle has read that passage, and his coven has grown from himself to Edward to Esmé to myself. And I'm sure the Volturi has read that, and their numbers have gone from the three to I don't know how many. What if they've read that, and have decided to make the 'new Earth' starting today ... with vampires? What if they are helping the 'old Earth' to pass away ... by replacing humanity with the 'new humanity' and relegating the supplanted race to the status of 'lambs' that will feed them?"

I shook my head, totally lost. "Okay, Rosalie, I'll bite. What if they are doing this?"

"If they are doing this," Rosalie said ominously, "then I will stop them. If I see Carlisle again and he's added more to his numbers, I will find a way to stop him. If the Volturi are enacting this plan ... I will stop them."

"Rosalie," I said, now fearful for her because of the absolute tone I heard in her voice. "You can't. You can't stop them."

"You are not the one to tell me what I can or cannot do," she said intensely. "This is genocide; this is subjugation. This is a wrong, and _I_ will _not_ stand by. I will _not_ allow it to persist."

"They'll destroy you, Rosalie," I said pleadingly.

"They can't," Rosalie said resolutely. "I am immortal; I cannot be destroyed."

"Rosalie, they did: I saw it," I shuddered at the memory from my dream. "In my dream, I saw the Volturi destroy you."

Rosalie narrowed her eyes at me.

"How?" she demanded.

I should have listened to that dangerous edge to her voice when she asked that question. I really should have. But I didn't.

"They burned you to the ground, Rosalie," I said quietly, swallowing past the lump in my throat as I recalled the horror of seeing her reduced to ash.

Rosalie looked disappointed.

"Fire doesn't touch me," she said in a lecturing tone. "Haven't you seen me tend the fire and heat the outhouse with embers I collected from the stove?"

"Yes, Rosalie," I answered, "fire doesn't affect your outside."

"What do you mean by that?" she asked impatiently.

"Well, you restarted the fire with your spit, right?" I said.

"Yes, the venom is an accelerant," and her raised eyebrow added an imperious _'obviously'_ to her statement.

And I thought an aside to myself: _so she __does__ have venom!_

"So, if you were torn up into pieces, and fire was ... _put_ on your insides ... well, you'd burn up pretty quickly, wouldn't you?" I challenged.

Rosalie became thoughtful.

I _did not like_ the look that crossed her face as she thought whatever it was she was thinking.

After a considered pause, she said to herself: "One way to find out."

She walked toward the stove.

"Rosalie," I said, alarmed, "what are you doing?"

Rosalie turned her head back to me: "Don't look," she commanded. "Turn away."

"No, Rosalie, I won't let you ..." I began.

"Suit yourself and your nightmares, then; I warned you." Rosalie said carelessly.

Before I could stop her, she unbuttoned the top half of her shirt and eased it off her right shoulder. Her head whipped to her exposed shoulder, and I heard the the shattered sound of two rocks smashing into each other. Her head lifted from her shoulder ...

... it looked _off._

She spat a smooth white stone into her hand and put her hand to the damper on the chimney.

"_NO!"_ I screamed, and I dived toward her to knock her away from the stove.

I tripped, and my face was flying right at the stove. _Oh, boy!_ I thought to myself ruefully: _not again!_

Rosalie snatched me out of the air with one arm and placed me, standing, by the mirrors.

"What is it with you and your recurrent desire to become intimately acquainted with the stove?" Rosalie asked angrily.

I wouldn't be distracted: "Rosalie, don't do that!"

But my eyes couldn't help but be drawn to her shoulder. It looked sunken; it was smaller ... by one bite.

"Scientific method," Rosalie said tersely. "How else are we going to test your hypothesis? Besides," she said reasonably, "it's just a small piece of me." She showed me the white stone in her hand. "I'll trade that for the veracity of how to destroy a vampire."

"It's _not_ a small piece of you, Rosalie!" I countered hotly. "Didn't you say you were all one thing, or something? What if you burn that, and it's, like, attached to you and the rest of you burns up? Didn't you even think about that!"

That gave Rosalie pause. She looked at me for a second, then said.

"Well, then, in that case, the nearest town is Belle Fourche. If you go five miles in ..."

"_Excuse me! EXCUSE ME!"_ I screamed. "When you burned up in my dream, the flames touched the sky! You'd take the whole cabin with you, and if I survived — _IF I SURVIVED! _— I'd have third degree burns all over me and probably be blind, to boot! Will you just stop for _one God-damned second and ..."_

"Okay, then," Rosalie interrupted, "I'll put you outside so that if ..."

"_SO I CAN FIND SOMETHING FIVE MILES AWAY WHEN I CAN'T EVEN FIND THE OUTHOUSE?"_ My screams were becoming more and more desperate, matching Rosalie's determination to destroy herself.

Rosalie regarded me a second, measuring me. Concern entered her eyes.

She held up her right hand, palm out toward me. Her arm looked funny being attached to her crooked shoulder like that.

"Okay, calm down, okay? I won't do this now, all right?" she said placatingly.

"No, Rosalie, you won't do it _ever!"_ I said fiercely, refusing to be calmed by her conditionally-offered olive branch.

Rosalie took back her hand, crossing her arms, and looking at me crossly.

"You know, for a captive, you surely take the cake on weirdness: so concerned for her captor's welfare." She said this with annoyance in her voice, but I saw just a hint of her fighting her lips from turning upward.

She placed the smooth stone back into the indentation in her shoulder, and I saw it work itself back into place, and as Rosalie buttoned her shirt, I saw it knit itself back into the rest of her body.

"Well," I answered, probably looking a bit fish-eyed at the shock of yet another miracle from the 'white robed' indestructible (or so I hoped) angel in front of me, "that makes us quite the well-matched odd couple, doesn't it?"

Rosalie grimaced at this, so I added: "... and since we've both taken the cake, I suppose we won't have to worry about what's for dessert after supper, now will we?"

Rosalie looked irritated at me wrecking her grandiose plan for her scientific experiment. "Yes, joy! One more thing I can cross of my list of things to worry about."

"Good," I said forcefully. "It's always a good thing to cross items off your list, so let's do this sign-language thing so you can cross that off, too, huh?"

Yes. Sign language lessons or something — _anything! _— to move away from exploding vampires and grand conspiracies of the Vampire Mafia.

"How did you maneuver the situation so that you are driving the schedule now?" Rosalie demanded petulantly.

_Well, somebody has to take charge around here!_ I groused to myself, and if Rosalie was hell-bent on destruction, well, then I had to make sure there was something on the schedule to keep her otherwise occupied.

But I answered a bit differently: "Fine, then let's go to the outhouse, then lunch then quiet time, you can go off and get the ..."

"Oh, no you don't, young lady!" Rosalie exclaimed. "You're not worming your way out of this morning's ..."

I went to the table and sat down, my notebook in front of me. "So let's get started already!"

Rosalie glared at me. I smirked at her.

Rosalie moved to the other side of the table, but didn't sit down.

"Your little attempt at reverse psychology is so blatant I won't even suffer myself to acknowledge it: I'm going to give you this lesson anyway." Schoolmarm Rosalie didn't look all that pleased delivering her 'I'm so superior' speech.

I rolled my eyes. _Whatever, _I thought.

Rosalie visibly collected herself and maneuvered herself into her chair with controlled grace.

"So," I said, waiting.

Rosalie looked at me for a second.

"Four signs," Rosalie said, and she raised her right hand with four fingers up, palm facing her, then twirled her index fingers together, then her hands became a (slow for her) blur of motion as she continued to speak.

"What we will ..." she began.

"Wait, Rosalie, stop! I'm not getting any of this at all!" I cried desperately. There was no way I was going to be able to pass her first test.

Rosalie smiled reassuringly at me. "Don't worry about it," her hands continued their motions, "you are a smart girl," she said slowly, pointing at me, then flicking her ring finger off her forehead then moving her thumb along her cheek.

She resumed normal speaking speed, her hands keeping pace with her spoken words: "I will point out the signs you are to learn, and we'll practice them together."

I did manage to pick out the twirling index fingers in all that mess.

"You're not going to be signing to me all day every day from now on, are you?" I demanded. I feared my head exploding from concentration and information overload.

Rosalie gave me a very small grin, and I swallowed hard.

"No," she said finally, and her hand became a little bird talking, "but immersion is a good way of learning ..."

"Um," I said, a bit helplessly.

Rosalie chuckled. "Let's just start with four signs, then, shall we?" I saw the four fingers and the twirl again.

Four signs sounded much better than immersion to me. "Okay," I agreed quickly.

"But Rosalie ..." I said. She waited. "Why are we doing this all again? And, um, it's just a question, okay? Not a philosophical debate."

Rosalie paused.

"Yes," she said, her hand nodding with her. "Why?" She pulled a 'Y' out of her right temple.

"Um, I asked you first, Rosalie," I said hesitantly, "so that means you have to answer."

She smiled. "Okay," she said, "you see that sign language is a language, yes?"

I was catching more of it. I saw a 'you' when she pointed at me. I saw a 'see' from her two fingers moving away from her eyes. I saw the twirling index fingers which I guessed mean 'sign' or 'sign language.' I saw the hand nodding 'yes.'

"Yeah, ..." I said, agreeing. Trying to keep up with her and follow the conversation was kind of hard.

"So, you see we are communicating ideas through sign language, yes?"

More signs, but I was just letting them flow over me as I concentrated on _what_ she was saying now, and not so much _how_ she said it ... or, more correctly, _signed_ it.

"Okay," I said, "I'm still with you ..."

"So," she continued, "if I am unable to speak for some reason, because I must control my breathing for extended _periods ..."_

Rosalie looked at me expectantly.

I am an idiot.

I blushed and looked away. "Oh," I said meekly.

"Um," I added helpfully.

"Look," I said finally, "can we just start today over and pretend the whole argument thing we had where I told you that you didn't want to talk to me anymore just didn't happen?"

I risked a peek at Rosalie.

She had that slight smile on her face. "Yes, I accept your apology."

I didn't realize I was apologizing. Then I realized: I _wasn't _apologizing, but I should have been.

I turned away again and covered my face with my hands. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

"But that's not the only reason," Rosalie continued her lecture as if nothing amiss had transpired. For all I knew she was signing away. I couldn't tell, as I was still buried in my hands.

"There is the possibility that you may have to communicate something to me, but you must not speak for some reason, perhaps so as not to give away your location."

"Because another vampire is looking for me?" I surmised, curious.

Silence.

"Look at me," Rosalie commanded quietly. I looked at her. Her hands were on the table, resting there. She was still.

I began to associate her stillness with seriousness.

"If you are aware of another vampire near you, scream as loud as you can. Scream for me, or scream for help." She looked me dead in the eye: "Scream."

"But won't that give me away?" I asked confused.

Rosalie shook her head in a _no, _her eyes not leaving mine. "Your heartbeat and scent have given you and your exact position away long before you and your weak senses will ever become aware of a vampire. If you see a vampire, it's because that vampire _wants_ you to see it, perhaps because it's toying with you ... some vampires like to play with their food. Use that lapse on their part. Draw as much attention to yourself as possible and that may be enough to drive them away. No predator desires the spotlight."

"But couldn't it grab me before anybody else showed up?" I persisted.

"I didn't say it would work; I said to do it," Rosalie said with distaste. "Anything is worth a try up to that point, because after that point, nothing tried will work."

"Oh," I said. I thought about that for a second. "I'm after that point with you, right?"

Rosalie looked away. "Yes," she finally answered, "after I took you from the Cullen's house, there's nothing possible to save you now. You are finite; I am eternal. There is no force that you yourself can bring to bear against me that I cannot counter with a much greater force ... and quite easily at that. You are entirely in my power."

"So what's the point of me trying anything if nothing is possible?" I demanded.

She looked back at me: "You'll just have to find something outside the realm of possibility to win. I didn't say it would be easy, and it's not even possible."

"Then what can I do, if I can't possibly do anything?"

"There's always prayer," she answered coolly. "Miracles are impossibilities, and it would take a _bona fide_ miracle to effect your escape."

I examined her closely. She wasn't teasing me.

"So it's all up to God?" I asked. A God, after Rosalie's little Bible verse demonstration, I was now so much more uncertain about.

"Yes," she said, "and you."

I sighed. "Thanks for that help," I said lightly, trying to keep the rancor from my voice.

"My pleasure," she said, but the grimace on her face didn't make her look pleased.

"Can we do the signs now?" I begged.

How come not one single thing that Rosalie ever did with me was just that? Bathroom trips were life-and-death experiences. PBJs were wall-art. Chicken noodle soup was a deadly tickling game. And let's not even talk about my period.

It was all about being on the knife's edge ... all the time.

"All right," Rosalie said, returning to what we were _supposed_ to be doing. "Your first, most important, sign is this."

Rosalie put her left hand out, palm up then brought her right hand down onto it: a cleaver striking the chopping block.

What did I just think about knife's edge?

I looked at her a bit dubiously. Was this some kind of joke? Was this a 'time for you to die' sign?

"Okay," Rosalie said, "now you repeat it."

"Um," I said cautiously, "Rosalie, what does that mean?"

"Do the sign first," Rosalie countered, "then I'll tell you what it means."

"No way," I said, not budging. "I'm not doing a sign unless you tell me first."

If I was going to be signing, 'Oh, kill me now, Rosalie,' I'd prefer to know about it.

Wouldn't you?

Rosalie sighed. "Always so adamant at always the most surprising times!"

"Yup," I growled, "that's me, so you'd better get used to that, sister!"

Rosalie's eyes widened a bit at my last statement, so I hemmed a bit: "So, um ..."

"This sign," Rosalie interrupted and repeated the chopping block motion, "means 'stop.'"

"Oh," I said.

"So," she continued into my surprise, "when this sign is made, _everything stops._ This sign is not to be used lightly. When I sign this to you, _you stop._ Don't talk; don't move; don't think; try to regulate even your breath. When you sign this to me, _I stop._ I will approach you no further. I _will_ stop my breath. If I am holding you, I will not alter position. If I am apart from you, I will maintain my distance. I will employ all my senses of the surrounding area to ensure your safety. If I am the danger, I will stop myself until the moment of danger is in the past. Do you understand me?"

She looked at me with serious eyes.

I swallowed convulsively and nodded.

"Now: you know what the sign means," she said. "Let's practice it together: 'stop.'" She barked out the last word and did the chopping block.

I imitated her.

"Good," she smiled at me. "Let's do this sign twice more: 'stop.'" She made the motion, and I did it, too.

"Good," she said, "One more time: 'stop.'"

We did it one more time.

"Okay," she said. "Have you got it?"

I nodded.

"Good," she said. "Now let's do the next most important sign for you. Repeat this sign."

She put her thumb between her first two fingers of her fisted hand and nodded it.

I repeated the sign.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

Rosalie looked at me levelly. "Potty," she said factually.

My hand was wiggling up and down still as the meaning hit me.

"Oh, my God!" I burst out, blushing hard, and covering my face with my hands.

I somehow managed to take my hand out of the fist before I did that. Thankfully. Poking my eye out with my thumb? That would have been a journalling moment right there.

"I don't see what the problem is ..." Rosalie said in confusion.

"You don't see the problem because you don't have to say: 'I need to go number two' in sign language!" I retorted.

"And ...?" Rosalie asked, curiously.

"Gah!" I exclaimed.

I could almost hear her shrug. "You can either say that out loud for all to hear, or you can sign it privately, and most will be none the wiser ... which did you prefer again?"

I sighed and uncovered my face. "It's just embarrassing, is all, okay, Rosalie?"

Rosalie looked at me blankly.

I sighed again.

"Okay," Rosalie said, "now let's practice that sign."

We practiced it. I blushed through that whole iteration. I wonder if my name should be 'Cherry'-something. Hm. 'Cherry Red Riding Hood'?

I remembered the Volturi wore hooded cloaks. Suddenly that new name didn't seem all that appealing.

"Rosalie ..." I said.

"Just a couple more signs," Rosalie said didactically, "then you can ask questions."

I ignored her command.

"Do the Volturi wear cloaks?" I asked.

Rosalie regarded me in stillness

"Grey cloaks?" I clarified. "With hoods?"

Rosalie just looked at me.

"Did you tell me that? I don't remember if you told me that or not."

I waited a moment. "You didn't tell me that," I said with certainty. "How did I know that if you didn't tell me that?"

"I think," Rosalie said slowly, mulling over her words, "that we can talk about this and more about your dreams while we're walking ... how does that sound?"

"Okay," I said, "you're also going to show me some stuff, too, right?"

"Yes," she said, nodding, "let's do that after this lesson, all right?"

"Okay," I said again.

"Next two signs?" she asked gently.

I nodded.

She smiled at me.

When she smiles at me like that ...

I looked away from her. She's just being a schoolmarm, I reminded myself ... a _nice_ schoolmarm; that's all.

"That's the next sign," she said.

I no longer knew what she was addressing: my thoughts or something else. I looked back at her. She raised her right hand in a fist and nodded it.

"This means 'yes,'" she said. "And this," her fist opened up to a parrot speaking, "means 'no.'"

"Okay," I said, "I get the 'yes,' that's easy enough. But why is 'no' that?"

"Sign the words as you say them," she commanded. "Now ask your question again."

"Um," I said, paying close attention to my words. "Okay, um ... so 'yes' is this," I nodded my fist, "but why is 'no' that?" I had the parrot speaking.

Rosalie shrugged, "That's just the sign for 'no.' I don't know the particular rhyme nor reason to it."

I narrowed my eyes at her. Making me ask the question again in signs and not knowing the answer? That was dirty pool.

"Okay," she said. "Let's do all four signs. I'll call out the words, and you sign them."

And that's what we did. They were just four signs, and she called them out in order. I got them with a little bit of thought, then she called them in random order. Sometimes I would anticipate wrong, so she kept repeating until the four signs came a bit more naturally to me.

It was hard work!

Rosalie smiled at me.

"What's that for?" I demanded.

"Congratulations!" she enthused. "You are learning a new language."

"Huh!" I said. "Well, I'll be! I am learning a new language, aren't I?"

"Yes, indeed, you are!" She seemed genuinely pleased with me.

"Oh, Rosalie?" I said.

"Yes?" she looked at me quizzically.

I put my thumb between my first two fingers of my closed fist and wiggled it up and down.

Rosalie positively beamed at me.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

* St. Augustine posed that betting on Heaven is a sure win. If you bet against Heaven existing, and you live the bad life, you get "rewarded" during your life (you are unhappy because living badly is never satisfying, as people who make poor choices keep rediscovering), and if Heaven _does_ exist, then you go to Hell, as well, for making those bad choices, so you are doubly punished. Either way you lose.

But then he said if Heaven doesn't exist and you live a _good_ life, then you receive the reward for that in your life (you were good; good for you). But if Heaven _does_ exist, then you get to go there. Either way you win.

St. Augustine, incidentally, should know: he tried living both ways. He wrote his wager after a long life of youthful, erhm, experimentation and then living a repentant life.

* Rosalie recites the passage from the beginning of Revelations, chapter 7, when she presents her captive of the conundrum of the possibility of what the 'new Earth' might mean to some.

* In the opening chapters of _Eclipse_ the newspapers reported that the victims (of what was later found out to be Victoria's newborn army) had been burnt, and an unidentified accelerant was used to burn them. This accelerant was vampire venom. That's why Irina basically exploded into flame when she was sectioned and ignited by the Volturi in Book III of _Breaking Dawn:_ her own internal (exposed) fluids accelerated her destruction.

* American Sign Language has more than several resources online. Of course, there are courses available, perhaps even at your local community college and _Joy of Signing_ is a popular book, sometimes used in these courses. That's what I had to do to learn sign language "in my day." These days there are additional resources, such as DVDs ("Signing Time" is a popular children's series which I, as an ancient mariner, have found to be very educational, so long as I'm willing to pretend I'm a member of the targeted audience (children from two to seven years of age)).

* Today, December 26, 2009, Boxing Day, marks the one-year anniversary of this story. Happy birthday, MSR!


	55. Beautiful

**Chapter summary: **"This is how I'll do it," she told me so tenderly, holding my face in her hands.

* * *

"Okay," Rosalie enthused, "now let's see that beautiful butterfly!"

"Um, Rosalie ..." I said, "I thought I just signed that I had to ... you know ... go."

"Yes," Rosalie answered undeterred, "in a half-an-hour to an hour, right? So we have a few moments."

"But ..." I said. Then I looked at her.

I couldn't tell that hope-filled face that mirror time _sometimes_ took longer than the expected 'few moments.'

"Okay," I sighed.

Rosalie's face turned down slightly, and I looked at her in confusion. What? She wanted me to be happy about mirror time?

"Would you do me a favor first, please?" she asked quietly.

I nodded, bracing myself for her to say for me put a smile on my face.

"Would you please brush your teeth?" Rosalie looked away.

"Oh!" I said. Then I blushed. "Okay."

I got up from the table and went to the sink, retrieving the tooth powder and brush, and set to work. I had forgotten to brush my teeth after breakfast, again, but I began to see her diligence had possibly more to do with her concern over my oral hygiene.

While I was doing that, Rosalie took the tub of water out the door and returned seconds later with it emptied. She refilled the pot of water on the stove with fresh snow, then she stripped the bed, taking the pillow case, too, and collected the pile of clothes.

"Wroza..." I spit out my mouth full of the paste and tried again. "Rosalie ..." I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

She looked up at me from her kneeling position by the stove.

"Could you ... would you save that shirt ..." I pointed down to the red-and-black checkered flannel shirt she had worn this morning.

She looked down at it, then looked back at me, grimacing.

"You like hand-me-downs, do you?" she demanded.

"No," I said quickly, "it's not that ... it's just that it was the shirt you wore the first day, too ... remember?"

"So it has sentimental value to you?" she asked, then her voice turned _more_ sarcastic, "'Aw: that's the shirt she wore the first day of my capture!'"

She blinked her eyes three times, rubbing it in.

I looked down into the sink.

"It wouldn't be," she asked, quiet again, "because it has me embedded into every fiber of it, would it?"

I kept my look down, then went back to brushing my teeth, not looking at her.

A checkered red and black flannel shirt draped itself over my shoulder.

I looked at Rosalie over by the stove, feeding the fire the latest sacrifices of bedding and clothes, and not her shirt.

"Thanks," I whispered.

She didn't look back, but I knew she heard me. I finished brushing my teeth, rinsed my mouth with Listerine, then water, then blotted off my mouth with my new shirt, breathing in _her _—_ heaven _— from the shirt.

Rosalie was also done with her chores.

"Thanks for reminding me to brush my teeth," I said.

"You're welcome," Rosalie said quietly and looked away.

My eyebrows creased. "My breath that bad?"

Rosalie shrugged. "It's not that ..." she said.

"What is it then?" I asked. I didn't think her concern over my oral hygiene was that overpowering for the reminder.

"I'd rather smell something other than the food when you exhale," she said it as if she were embarrassed.

"I'm sorry, Rosalie," I said. "I didn't know it bothered you that much. I'll remember in the future."

"Thank you," she said.

It looked like there was more to it.

"Does the food smell that bad?" I asked her.

Rosalie didn't answer.

"How bad _does _it smell?" I persisted.

Rosalie shrugged.

"Wait." I said, it was starting to dawn on me. "Does it smell worst than the animals?"

I recall from my dream days ago how horrible animals tasted to her. Surely food couldn't be worst than that!

Rosalie looked back at me. "Yes," she said levelly.

"Wow!" I said. _"Why?_ I mean, how? I mean ..." I didn't know what I meant, or what I was asking.

"At least animals are alive," Rosalie said. "The food is dead or preserved, but then, when it's cooked, it's more dead."

"So," I said, "that's what my breakfast smells like to you: 'more dead'?"

Rosalie nodded her head _yes._ "Putrid," she clarified.

"And ... but ... you cooked it for me," I said confused.

Rosalie shrugged. "How else are you going to eat? And you do need to eat: you keep losing weight."

I wonder how she knows that.

"Would it help you if I cooked the food? You could go somewhere else and I could ..." I started.

Rosalie was shaking her head in a _no. _"It wouldn't help," she said, cutting me off.

"Why not?" I asked.

"I would rather cook. It would be more unpleasant for me to scrap you and your skin off the stove when you consummate your love affair with it." Rosalie said coolly.

I rolled my eyes. "I don't have a love affair with the stove, Rosalie," I said with a touch of humor, colored with irritation.

Rosalie crossed her arms. "Mmmhmm," she answered, her lips twitched upward.

I sighed. "Where were we again?" I asked.

Rosalie moved to the mirrors. "Here," she said. "We were here."

Oops.

Rosalie waited for me, so I went to her ... and to the mirrors. It'd probably be a bad start if she had to drag me there.

Rosalie regarded me thoughtful.

"Remember after you combed my hair I said beauty isn't only skin deep?" she asked.

I blinked. "So you're saying I'm beautiful on the inside, is that it?"

A smile touched Rosalie's lips. "I think we both know what that means. So, I'm not going to say anything at all about your inner beauty, nor about your beautiful soul. You wonder how I can see you as beautiful, when you apparently do not see that, so now I will show you your beauty on the outside. But just remember that beauty on the outside is one thing, beauty on the inside, another. You have both."

"Rosalie," I _tsked._ "How can you say that when you're ... and I'm ..."

There was just no comparison between us. She's a goddess, and I'm not. I'm definitely not.

Rosalie's brow darkened. "You are comparing yourself to the wrong person."

I already knew that. "Because you're too beautiful?" I asked humbly.

"No," she said annoyed, "because _you_ are."

"Huh?" I asked stunned, but then tried to recover. "I mean, pardon me?"

Rosalie explained: "You are too beautiful to compare yourself to others. See yourself worthily and correctly as that. As beautiful."

I sighed. "Yeah, right."

I glanced at the center mirror, then looked away. There was somebody beautiful in the mirror, but she had blond hair. The person standing next to her ...?

"Why do you do that?" Rosalie demanded, staring at me intensely.

I dropped my eyes.

"What is it that you see in the mirrors?" she pressed.

I sighed, looked at her again, then waved at the image in the mirrors, top to bottom, in one angry sweep.

Wasn't it obvious what I saw? _Me._ That's what I saw. Plain, little me.

This displeased Rosalie. "That's not very descriptive, nor helpful," she chided.

"_Jeez, Rosalie!"_ I burst out. "I see me, okay? That's what I see. Just me. Just nothing me, okay?"

"No, it's not okay to see 'just nothing you.'" _Of course_ it wouldn't be okay with _her._ Nothing I did or said ever was, so why would she change now?

"Besides," she continued, "what's wrong with seeing 'just you'?"

I shrugged.

"What are you afraid of?" Rosalie asked.

I looked at her. "Of me, right?" I hated it that she always had to show me that I was less than her when she was saying how wonderful I was.

Rosalie crossed her arms.

She shook her head. "That's not it."

_And _I hate it when she already knows the answers to her 'questions.'

I'd have to restart that list.

"Describe yourself to me," Rosalie said.

I sighed.

"Rosalie, can we _please ..."_ I began.

"We can _please_ describe ourselves," Rosalie commanded. She waved to the mirrors.

I turned to the mirrors. No sense in arguing with Miss Royal We.

But I looked back at her and shrugged. I knew what I looked like; she knew what I looked like.

Rosalie grimaced. "Not a very good description."

"Rosalie," I said, "what's the point?"

"Stay here," Rosalie commanded.

She left my side, and I saw her go to the table. She picked up my journal and a pencil.

I worked on not losing my cool. But maybe I should have put that dig about her saying 'um' after all.

She came back to my side and opened up the journal and read my essay out to me.

"'The cabin. The end.'" Her voice was flat and disapproving.

I winced. "So?" I asked petulantly.

"So," she explained, "how can you live if you don't open your eyes and see what's around you?"

"So blind people aren't alive?" I countered.

"Seeing people are often more blind than blind people; I can quote you Bible verses about that," Rosalie lectured. "But we aren't talking about blind people, we are talking about you."

"I see what's around me, Rosalie," I said defensively.

"You do look and you do ponder," Rosalie agreed. "You do, in fact, see deeply, more so than most, but if you don't examine what you've seen, you will continue to make wrong conclusions and you will continue to act wrongly. And," she continued relentlessly, "if you are unable to express what you've seen, how will you show others what you've seen, be it terrible or beautiful, plain or extraordinary?"

"Who would want to know what I've seen?" I asked her pragmatically. I mean, _come on!_

"I would," Rosalie said resolutely.

"Why?" I demanded right back.

Rosalie raised a condescending eyebrow and crossed her imperious arms.

"So I can find my way around the cabin should I have difficulty seeing on my own," was her sarcastic reply.

I sighed, but her comment brought me right back to when she took that first breath of _me_ in again after my period. So her comment, contrarily, didn't lighten my mood at all.

"So," Rosalie continued unabatedly. "Describe the cabin to me."

I blinked at her.

She raised my notebook. I saw it was my essay page.

"What kind of floor does it have?" she asked.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, confused.

"Is it a dirt floor?" she clarified.

"Well, no, Rosalie, it's wood." I said, still mystified.

"Does it have a table?" she continued.

"Yeah," I said.

"Is the tabletop resting on a pedestal?" She scratched with her pencil as she talked.

"No, it's on four legs," I said.

"Hm," she said, "so is it a fancy table? Ornate?"

"No, it's just a plain old table," I said. Maybe she really was blind.

"Does it have chairs or stools?"

"Chairs," I said.

"How many?" she asked.

I'm sure she could count them, but I said, "Four chairs, Rosalie," to answer her question.

She looked up from what she was writing. "So we've established that the cabin as a wooden floor and a table with four chairs. Tell me, in detail, everything else this cabin has."

"Okay," I said. And I told her. I told her about the triptych and the water basin she brought in, as well as the kerosene lamps. I told her about the stove, the sink with the tiny mirror above it, the bed in the corner near the entrance and underneath the sole window the cabin had.

Rosalie wrote at a furious pace as I told her these things.

When I had finished speaking she looked up from her writing. She turned the notebook so that it faced me.

"From four words to an essay that occupies a page and a half in your book," she said.

I looked down. It was my chicken scratch; my writing exactly.

I looked back up her.

"So?" I asked.

"So," she answered patiently, "now you have source material to write from. Has anything happened on the bed?"

I blushed.

"You could write a complete story about what's happened there," she said.

_Oh, boy, could I ever!_ But she'll never read that one. Me, searching for vampire bites, _down there?_ That one wasn't going into my rather public private journal.

She continued apparently obliviously, "How about at the table? Anything ever happen there?"

Or beside there ... on the floor ... with her on top of me, tickling me. I blushed again.

"Or by the mirrors?" she continued.

I hoped-hoped-hoped an adventure like the other ones wouldn't happen here, too!

"Do you see the worlds that open up when you express yourself lucidly?" she asked. "Those worlds won't exist if you don't breathe life into them with your words."

"So, let's open up the world that is you," she commanded.

My eyes were now very firmly fixed on the floor.

"Humor me, please," she said, indicating the mirrors again.

I turned back to the image.

She gently put her hands on my shoulders. "May I say you are doing better at looking into the glass," she said.

"Go me," I said sarcastically.

"Well," she smiled faintly, "baby steps. Now," she continued, "I'll help you with your description of yourself. Are you taller than me?"

I looked at her image. I guess we were going to do this. "No, Rosalie, you're taller."

"So, how tall are you?" she asked neutrally.

"Five feet, four inches." I knew my height. Rosalie stood a head taller than me.

"There," she smiled, pleased.

"What color are your eyes?" she asked.

"Brown," I said.

"What color is your hair?" she asked, equally noncommittally.

"Brown," I said again.

"And your skin?"

"White," I said.

"Just white," she challenged.

I shrugged. "Okay, pale white, but not as white as yours." Because hers had like this glow. It wasn't glowing, but it was so pale as to be, like, well, pure white.

"May I tell you what I see?" she asked my image in the mirror humbly.

"Okay ..." I said cautiously, bracing myself for the 'you're a beautiful princess' fairy-tale.

She moved her left hand up to my head, and moved it gently through my hair, fanning it.

"Your hair is brown?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Just brown?" she clarified.

"Okay, so there's a little bit of red in it," I answered. I felt I was giving ground, but I couldn't tell why I felt this way.

"'A little bit of red in it' ..." she said quietly as she gazed at my hair.

The way she was looking at my plain-brown hair? It looked admiring. I felt self-conscious.

"Okay, Rosalie," I couldn't stand the building anticipation anymore. "What do you see it as?"

"Your hair ..." she said reverently, "is brown, but a rich chocolate brown, and the red? There's more to it than that, it's a maroon, a crimson, but, on the other side of the brown is an indigo, but it takes discernment, for your hair is full-bodied, so one sees 'brown' in the thickness of your hair with lighter and darker tints, but when caught in the light, like this, see?"

I looked at my hair in the mirror as she fanned it.

And it began to happen, just like I feared ... she was working her magic powers on me, for I didn't see that ratty mop on my head, I started to see something, maybe, that she saw.

"Your skin is 'pale white'?" she returned her hand to my shoulder, and paused.

"Rosalie," I said, "you said that yourself. Remember when you were telling me about your rule outside?"

"Yes, I did say that," she answered. "And I meant it, too. But not industrial, not sickly. The paleness of your skin has a softness to it ..."

She brought the back of her right hand against my cheek and stroked it. My face burned at her touch.

She smiled lightly.

"And a creaminess, when you aren't blushing," she finished.

"Like soap," I said, remembering her not-Cinderella story.

"Yes," she said, unperturbed by my implication, "like soap, a creamy ivory, soft and comforting. Perfection."

I blushed harder.

"And your face," she continued.

I sighed.

"Well, you wish to compare, so then let's compare," Rosalie retorted to my silent protest. "My face, look at it."

I did, relieved that she wasn't directing all her attention at me.

"Noble, isn't it?" she preened, turning her head in profile.

She moved her right hand to her own face.

"It has patrician lines, so I have what is called classic beauty."

I raised my eyebrow at her. I loved when she was being so humble like this.

"Yes," she said, seeming to answer a question, "I am beautiful; it's easy for all to see."

"But," she continued, "your face ..."

Her hand when from her face to mine, and now her fingers traced my profile.

"It's not as angular as mine ... it has softer lines," she said, then looked into my eyes in the mirror: "Your face is heart-shaped."

"_Jeez!"_ I exclaimed and tried to look away, but her right hand held my chin, gently, in place.

"Reflecting," she continued through my outburst, "a kind and generous nature."

I rolled my eyes and tried to control my breathing.

"And your eyes," she said.

Then the next thing she said surprised me.

"Here it gets hard for me," she said.

_As if anything was hard for her, _I thought incredulously.

"For I'm supposed to be talking only of outward beauty, but your 'brown eyes'?" she said, again, with awe, "they open up right to your soul, and how can I describe the beauty of one without touching on the other?"

"Rosalie ..." I said. She was just taking this too far.

"You do believe you have a soul, don't you?" she asked quietly.

"You know I do," I responded quietly.

I wonder, when she consumed my soul, how it tasted to her.

"Yes, I do," she confirmed, "do you?"

And now I knew what she meant by 'faith,' because I sure knew I had a soul when she took it from me, and nothing since should have convinced me otherwise, or should have made me forget that.

I simply nodded.

"So when I say your 'brown eyes' have an innocence to them, an openness ... well, what does 'trusting' and 'pure' look like? One need only look deeply into your eyes to know."

"Rosalie," I said, falling further under her spell, but trying not to, "this is too much. Stop it, please."

"Why?" she demanded. "What's too much," she clarified, "is you looking in the mirror and hating what you see. That's too much, and entirely too mystifying. How could you look in the mirror and see ugliness. It's criminal to call beauty ugly, but that's what you did. That's wrong, and I'm righting that wrong."

"Rosalie, ..." I pleaded.

"Just a bit more, and then we're done," she scolded.

"Okay," I said in defeat.

But I knew what she meant by 'just a bit more,' because the rest of me? There was really nothing there to admire, so I felt I could weather her wrap-up.

"So, how would you describe your figure?" she asked.

Now, this was no fair. She was supposed to do all the heavy lifting, so I could deny it.

"I don't," I said, very conscious of the figure next to me.

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because I don't have one," I answered shamefacedly.

But this was one point she couldn't possibly argue with.

"Hm," she said, nodding.

_See?_ I thought sadly: she couldn't argue with plain facts.

"So, you're flat back here?" Her left hand went south behind my back and rested on my rump.

I absolutely screamed in shock, and would have knocked over the mirrors in a leap from her electric touch, but her hands, her right on my shoulder and left back there, kept me gently anchored in place.

Her hand returned to my shoulder as I sucked in rapid gasps of air, trying to refill my lungs from the shock she had given me.

"No," she continued, a faint smile on her lips and in her voice, "you're not. You're not flat, nor sagging, but rounded. You have a pert little rounded butt; very cute."

I could not believe what I just heard. Maybe I was imagining things in the euphoria of my hyperventilation. That's the only reasonable explanation I could come up with. I hope I didn't faint from the oxygen rush.

"And your front ..." she continued, looking down.

Now I really had her.

"Now that is flat," I said ... flatly.

"Hm," she said again, thoughtfully.

That was the same hum she gave for my butt.

I was suddenly afraid she'd touch my breasts. Well, I mean, my chest. I don't have breasts: I have mosquito bites.

She didn't. She turned me away from the mirrors to face her.

"You think I can read your mind, don't you?" she demanded.

I looked away from her. I disagreed: I didn't _think_ she read my mind; I _knew _it.

She gently and irresistibly turned my head to face her again.

"I don't have to read your mind to know what you are thinking," she said. "So let me tell you something that you know. I'm going to say this to you, and you are going to hear it, but you must hear everything that I tell you."

"Look at me," she demanded. I _was _looking at her.

Her cobra eyes transfixed me, again.

Then she said it: "You have tiny breasts."

The shock of it rocked me to the core. My face stung as if she slapped me. Hard. And I felt my insides shrivel up as I wished my outsides would now do.

"Listen to me," she commanded, almost angrily. "Your breasts are small."

Boy, this just got better and better, didn't it?

"I... I know," I whispered past the lump in my throat.

"But, _but,"_ she continued fiercely, "You know that I've had to save your life several times. I've had to strip you and reclothe you. You _do_ have breasts, and _they are beautiful._ They are perfectly proportioned to your body, and ... _AND!"_

Her anger demanded my attention. I took my eyes off myself and looked into hers.

"And," she continued. "What is the fixation on large breasts, anyway? What is their advantage?"

"Easy for you to say," I whispered regretfully.

"_Yes, it is," _she snarled. "Yes, it is," she repeated more moderately. "So let's pretend. Let's have you be Rosalie Hale of the full breasts for a moment, shall we? Let's have you be at one of the many social gatherings that I've attended, hm?"

She let go of my shoulders, and took a small step back.

"You are me, now, and I'm a bank executive, okay?" she demanded angrily.

Her whole comportment changed. "Oh, hello," she said smarmily, "you must be Rosalie Hale, Mr. Hale's daughter, how do you do?"

She extended her hand to me, the whole time she was talking, however, she was looking right at my chest.

I took her hand, confused. "Um, fine?"

She pumped my hand vigorously, her eyes remained fixed on my chest. "Great, well, it's a _pleasure_ to meet you," she was still pumping my hand, staring right at my chest. "If you ever have any investment questions, I'm your man, I'd be happy to discuss ... _options ..._ with you, just give me a call!"

She pretended to take out a business card, and extended the imaginary card to me.

Staring at my chest.

I blushed, I couldn't stand the intense scrutiny. The _leering._

She kept her hand out, waiting for me to take the card.

I "took" it quickly. "Um, thanks," I said, thoroughly embarrassed, seeking a way to make my escape.

Rosalie finally gave it to me, she returned to being her, raising her eyes back to my face.

"That's what it is like, the unrelenting attention, the constant fixation. They aren't interested in the person that I am, they are interested in only one thing." Then she sneered and spat out spitefully: _"'Look at those knockers!'_ That's all they care about."

She said the last phrase dismissively.

"But you," she returned her attention to me. "Do you desire that attention? No, of course not: nobody does; that is, nobody, unless they are lost to narcissism, nobody with a healthy self-image desires that."

"You don't have a huge chest for people to leer at, but what you do have is a perfectly proportioned body. You are _not_ flat, you are nymph-like; elfin. A subtle beauty that requires study because that it does not attract undue attention, but requires the person knows _you_ before they admire the hidden beauty of your body."

I stared at her; gaping.

"Rosalie," I said disbelievingly, "I didn't think it was possible, but only you could say that and believe it."

She shook her head. "No, you, too, can say that and believe that."

She reached out and turned me back to the mirror.

"You are beautiful," she commanded, then added softly: "Do you see it, your beauty?"

"I..." My breath caught in my throat. It was becoming too hard to breathe.

"Do you see that _I_ see you as beautiful?" she asked quietly.

I looked at me. I looked at her, looking at me.

I couldn't believe that I was beautiful. But I _did_ see that she saw me as that.

I nodded my head _yes_ solemnly.

"Good," she said, firmly.

And then: "Now."

She turned me back to face her.

And then.

She wrapped my head in her perfectly smooth and cold hands, looking at me so tenderly ...

_Oh, my God! _The realization hit me._ She's going to kiss me!_

She had just called me beautiful in a way that only a lover could call the loved one beautiful. That is: blindly. She saw me in a way nobody else in the world possibly could, because nobody else saw me like that.

Not even me.

That meant she ... she ...

_She did love me._

And so she was going to kiss me now, I could see it in her eyes, I could see it in _her._

"This is how I'll do it," she said.

I couldn't breathe, even though I heard myself panting in desperate gasps.

"Dooh ... do what?" I asked, looking into the depths of her coal-black eyes.

"This is how I will kill you," she said.

I didn't understand what she said.

"What?" I asked, confused, but coming down from my heightened sense of awareness to this confused reality of Rosalie holding me.

"I will take your beautiful, heart-shaped head into my hands, and then ..." She paused and smiled sadly at me. "I will bring my hands together, and you will be no more."

"When?" I gasped out, looking into her impenetrable eyes.

"Before the Volturi can touch you," she responded, so remote, so distant.

My tears wet her hands. But I knew why I was crying this time: I was crying the tears she couldn't.

She let go of my head and patted my cheek once, affectionately, dropping her hands to her sides.

She didn't taste my tears.

"Will it hurt?" I asked. I didn't know what else to say.

"I will try to be quick, but ... every change is painful, and the change from life to death is the hardest one of all ... I will try to make it as painless as it can be, but ..."

She looked away.

"Oh," I said.

I looked at her. She looked so despondent.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

She looked back at me. She shook her head.

"You are welcome," she said quietly in reply.

We looked at each other in silence, both saying nothing. And in that nothing, saying everything.

* * *

**Chapter End Notes:**

"And I Am Not," in Jocelyn Torrent's story "Rose Read" explores in depth Rosalie's god-like beauty to Bella's feelings of ... not.

The "woe" condemnations of Jesus are enumerated in Matthew 23, including particular vilification of 'blind guides.'

I was inspired to use our girl's rather very self-deprecating term of 'mosquito bites' from _Alice's_ self-description in chapter 6 ("in which I hope you'll forgive me") of Lion in the Land's story: "Survivor: Vampire Island."


	56. Nagging-Regrets

**Chapter summary:** I see it, in her eyes. She works things over and over in her head. Every time she asks a question, it hits the mark. _She _finds this work exhausting, but what about me? I have to do all her work, and then I have to answer her. And I have to not care. And not long to look at her as she thinks. She's merely human, after all. Why should I care? I see it ... in her eyes.

* * *

We were walking.

It was like ... life moved on. Like, this is what you do after the ... well, what is Rosalie? a girl my age? an ageless woman? ... tells you, and shows you, how she'll kill you. You walk through the cold and the snow to go to the outhouse so you can pee and ... yes, hm, poop, too. _Damn that whole-wheat bread!_

But it doesn't stop, the mind, from thinking, and wondering.

And not being able to put most of it together.

And it's funny what nags the mind, what won't let it go, it wasn't that Rosalie's going to kill me, I've accepted that, and that doesn't bother me. No, what bother's me is that she _won't_ kill when I tell her, ... I mean, like, _why?_

But Rosalie doesn't like why-questions, and you'd figure that if I asked enough why-questions, she'd get ticked off and, well: off ... me, but no, she gets it into her head that I have to be a little-Miss-Perfect lady and if I'm not doing a good enough job, I don't deserve to die, or something, so I have to go on living under Miss Autocrat here.

And _then_ when I get good enough in her eyes, _then she'll kill me?_

Okay, two things: 1. c'mon. I mean: _really!_ and 2. in what kind of universe does that make sense at all, except in Miss Bossy's universe, which never makes any sense about anything at all ever!

So, besides the 'Oh, I'm gonna kill you, ... but not now' thing bothering me, that doesn't really bother me because it's just...so...stupid, but tell Miss I'm-always-right that and then you get the lecture and then, _worse, _the questions afterwards that you have to answer the way she wants you to answer, because if you don't, she starts digging in with more and more questions showing you how stupid you were for not answering the first question _her_ way, and _God forbid_ you get any of the follow up questions wrong, because it starts the whole process over from there!

Okay, living in a cabin in the woods in the dead _(har, har!)_ middle of winter when you're the only living person for miles ... there might be some people who would wonder what you'd do with yourself in all that boredom and monotony...

I have a favor to ask you: when somebody says that? Send them my way. I have a few things to scream at them.

So, yeah, all that doesn't really bother me, except when it _really bothers me,_ because I've accepted it.

It's all just so ... _Rosalie._

I sighed, the steam escaping through my scarf covering my mouth and nose, eddies of my breath curling around the very little tiny part of my face that felt the cold non-breeze of the still air knife into my being.

And I could feel it, in the utter silence broken only by my trudging boots breaking through the icy layer of snow crust. I could feel Rosalie hear my sigh, and I could feel her eyes follow the eddies of my breath, and I could feel her process every single one of my thoughts and categorize each one of them.

And I could, at the same time she dissected me, the vivisectionist, I could feel her monitor me, just like I imagine her father, ... well, her 'father,' I say, but Dr. Cullen, would monitor me if I were one of his patients. He would monitor me like ...

Like she's doing right now, with care, with concern, making sure I can do this simple, stupid thing of walking to the outhouse without killing myself or worse, in her mind, I'm sure, tiring myself.

Not that I haven't given her ... okay: _multiple, okay? MULTIPLE, okay?_ ... examples to justify her concerns, okay? but if her goal is to off me, why doesn't she just ...

Well, why doesn't she just let me die, the three times a day I almost nearly die, except I don't because she rescues me each and every time.

Yeah, that one bothers me, too. A lot.

But, like I say, it's funny, here I am trudging through snow, with the black spot in my hand, given to me by the very, okay: _vampire_ right next to me, but instead of just offing me, she okay: _cares_ _for me!_ And she like ... she like ...

I feel my throat constrict at the thought of her every pleased and encouraging smile at my 'progress' which is whenever she sees me do something really stupid like make a sign for 'I need to go potty' for God's sake, or when she ... _oh, God, ..._ when she held me and held me and held me as I cried and cried and cried, well, most recently, this morning, like two seconds ago, or when she held me by the fire and nursed me back to life the last time I got lost in this impenetrable woods and was about to lie down and ... 'rest' but I know that's a lie: that is to lie down and to die on the snow that would hold me in its embrace forever, I know because it told me.

I feel my mouth go dry, remembering it telling me all those horrible _lies, okay? LIES_ about Rosalie and then trying to take me back again, it's lost prize snatched away from death by Death Herself, with angelic wings and hands of lightning and eyes of molten gold fire.

Yes. Her. Death saved me from death and nursed me back to life.

Because she lov...

That is, because she _doesn't_ love me. She told me.

She told me.

She doesn't love me. I'm just ... what did she say? 'In her care.' or 'hers' or something, and she doesn't let things get hurt or something when their hers or ...

The lump in my throat just wouldn't go away.

And she told me. She told me I would be _insane_ to love her.

She told me.

She told me. And she _knew_ I _know_ what that means. I know what they do to insane people. I mean, I don't know first hand, but Pa works in law enforcement. He's had to cool down some situations, he's had to have some people take a night after a hard day out in the fields then a hard night at the bar, he's had to let them cool down for a night...

But when they don't cool down ... well, ...

There are ... asylums, Back East, for people who ... lose it ... and ... I've heard ... stories.

They keep trying ... 'treatments.' In the Teens it was electroshock, and they still do that, and they've shown people who've been 'cured' and ...

I've read about it. They bring them out, and show everybody how peaceful this violent, disruptive, ... _insane ..._ person was, and the person sits there, and smiles, and everybody goes away, and then ...

... they put that person back away.

And now there's a new procedure that's just come out ... not 'come out' as it's been used, but there's some stuff in the newspapers about it. It's called leucotomy.

Then put a knife in your nose, ... and gut your brain.

And they've said that people come out of that procedures, the very, very violent ones who even resist electroshock treatments, and they come out ... docile.

It's because they were _insane, _and now they ...

well, now they can't even compete with the carrots they're being spoon-fed for holding up a conversation.

And that's what Rosalie knew I knew she meant when she said I would have to be _insane_ to love her. Because then, all she would have to do is to bring me to one of those asylums, I'm sure, she being in a doctor's family, she knows where one is, and then just say, 'I found this girl in the woods.' ... a truthful statement, and then let me explain myself.

She'd let me say everything.

And then they ...

_They._

They would nod their heads, knowingly, kindly, and ask me to come with them, please.

And if I went with them, they would do that to me.

And if I resisted, they would restrain me, a violent patient, resisting treatment for her own good, and then sedate me, and then

... they would do that to me.

Rosalie asked me, 'what are you?'

I don't know the answer to that question. Not to her liking, anyway. When she asked, when she touched my ... my, okay, _my shirt_ that was right above my heart, ... yes, there, and you know where, but you can't say, 'Uh, Rosalie, you're touching my breast, okay?' Because she would say, 'No, I'm not: I'm touching your shirt, not you. What is you?'

And you have no answer to that, except to stand there and try to breathe and not to faint.

Well, I do know one thing: I do know what is _not me._ I know it twice now.

The one thing that is not me is that carrot in that asylum for the insane that Rosalie dropped off after the carrot, that used to be a girl, told Rosalie she loved her.

And the other thing that isn't me is the shell that Rosalie, here, ... _right here, I'm sure of it, _ sucked the very soul out of my body, and then ...

And then, she could do anything she wanted to do to that body, because, you see, that body isn't _me._ Rosalie told me that. That body is just a shell, soulless now, filled with blood, heart pumping it to every extremity, just pooled in a certain girl's certain place coming out of her period, right there, right against the skin, right there for the taking.

But Rosalie is a _Hale._ And a _Hale_ doesn't drink human blood, so she wouldn't do that, right?

Right?

But is a shell she just sucked the soul out of ... it's a body, yes, but is it ... human? Because a human has a soul, but I ... or, that is,_ my body,_ ... didn't have a soul then, right here.

Right here.

I don't know if she ...

I can't even think of her, seeing me lying there, bending down to me, closer and closer, my soul consumed into her infinite eyes, as she now had me, completely, in her power as she does now, as she does always, but me, no longer there in my body, defenseless, pliant ... so easy to ease the pants off my legs, so easy to spread my irresisting legs, so easy to lean in, licking her lips and ...

The eddies of my breath started to condense on my scarf, and I had to control my breathing from coming out in ragged pants.

Not that my control did me any good. Not from _her._

"What's wrong?"

A beautiful voice, I would say, a _musical_ voice broke into the silence like a symphony of sound: sweet, compelling, ... perfect.

I would like to say I heard concern in that voice, concern for me. Maybe that concern was there, maybe it wasn't.

I had learned, over the infinity of time these last few days in these woods, that my feelings and thoughts are always wrong when it comes to me, when it comes to her.

"Uh," I stalled, quickly trying to divert my thoughts from what I was thinking about me on this snow-covered forest floor, and her, above me, leaning in, to take me.

I couldn't think of anything else, or, more correctly, I couldn't think of anything that wasn't completely stupid.

As usual.

"Uh, nothing," was all I could muster, and I said it hurriedly, hoping she wouldn't pounce on that, and on me, like she always does when I'm being stupid.

That is: all the time.

There was a contemplative silence next to me, but that didn't stop her presence from filling that void of silence, filling the woods around me, filling ... me.

And I waited for her to pounce, but, after a few seconds I dared to hope that this time, unlike all the other times, she wouldn't, that she would choose to cut me a break.

But the waiting ... everything, always, is on a knife's edge for me now.

But we kept walking, and, thankfully, the atmosphere wasn't filled with her intensity and her anger and fury that she directed, always, right at me.

After a few steps I dared to hope that she'd let it pass, and just ... walk alongside me.

I dared to hope that, for one time in our now shared existence, something as simple as walking to the outhouse would be as simple as, well ... walking to the outhouse.

So we walked, and the sadness and fear in me dissipated.

It was turning out to be a normal walk, ... nice, even.

But then I forgot to factor in the one thing that always screws everything up.

That is: me, and my big fat mouth.

"Rosalie ..." I began, and then winced. I wish I had a two-by-four, so I could smack myself with it.

The silence that was Rosalie answered casually, "Yes?"

But I heard the control, the masked caution in her tone. She said she felt the ground beneath her feet shift dangerously when I asked these questions.

I wonder if ...

Nah, couldn't be. Stupid thought. Rosalie? Afraid of me? Ridiculous!

But I'd better withdraw my question before she hears it and then starts shouting at me, calling me stupid with every word in the dictionary, and ruining our nice walk.

"Never mind," I said, "It was just a stupid thought, so forget it."

Bad call. I felt the silence become thoughtful.

And that never was a good thing for me.

"Hm," she said disapprovingly.

I grimaced when I heard that. When Rosalie hums, I've learned to expect a long drawn-out 'conversation,' which means tears from one party and anger and shouting from the other.

"How am I to judge if your thought is stupid if I am not permitted to hear it?" she demanded reasonably.

But it was a demand.

My bit-off rancorous reply of, _Well, you could just read my mind, like you always do!_ would not have helped the conversation, nor the mood any. So, I had to try to get out what I dug myself into, and somehow gracefully, at that.

I've never been successful in finding that 'somehow.'

"Well, ... okay, Rosalie," I began cautiously, "the thing is, it's a why-question, and I'm not supposed to ask why-questions ..." _because only stupid people like me do that, _I thought bitterly, "... so how do I ask a why-question without ... well, asking a why-question?"

I dared to sneak a peek at her.

Mistake.

It was a mistake, firstly, because, you know how you try to have a brain and be intelligent to somebody else when you're talking to them, right? You know, when you're trying to impress them, or at least not look stupid?

Now imagine that person _isn't_ the most beautiful person in the world, because 'the most beautiful person in the world' can't touch the angel limned in light walking beside me, with coal-black eyes radiating a molten-gold fire and face and hands reflecting the sun as lightning.

'Take your breath away'? Not even close. You forget to breathe, looking at Rosalie.

And the other reason why it was a mistake was because this beautiful, terrifying angel was ...

Frowning.

Worse: frowning ... _thoughtfully._

I hate it when Rosalie pauses to think.

She wasn't looking at me; she was looking off into the distance, but presently she returned and did look at me, as we walked, me trudging through the snow, her gliding above it, and said quietly, "I've tried to make sense out of what you just asked me, but I'm afraid I have to label it as pure metaphysics." She gave me a chiding look. "Please," she said kindly, "just ask your question so we do have something real we can talk about."

I sighed. _Of course_ she would say that, because why? Because she always gets her way, that's why, and if she doesn't get her way, then she nags you and berates you and scolds you and browbeats you, or, worse of all, _reasons_ with you until she does get her way.

There's just no winning against her.

You figure I would have figure that out by now, but no.

Rosalie wasn't the only good nagger here, however. There was one better, and she knew it, too, _damnit!_ And that better nagger was my infinite and insatiable curiosity. I mean, once something caught my attention, I just. had. to. _know._ And I wouldn't stop until I did know... even if knowing was the death of me.

"Well, okay," I stuttered, "so, remember when you showed me, you know, about the that Bible verse and how it was talking about vampires and stuff, or something?"

I was stalling, not really knowing how to get started with my question, because with a question like that, you just can't ... _ask_ that, right?

I could feel Rosalie's frown, because I didn't dare look at her, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the ground ahead of me, so I wouldn't trip over a fallen tree branch and flatten my face on the snow.

Least-ways that why I told myself I wasn't looking at her.

"... how _some_ might _interpret_ those verses that way, yes, I remember. Your question?"

She wasn't letting me stall, and she _just had_ to correct me, even in my stalling.

"Well, ..." I said, and bit my lip, "well, I noticed that ... well, when you dropped trou ... you, you know, weren't wearing panties."

And _that,_ ladies and gentlemen, was what was nagging me. Not that vampires exist, as that's common (to me) knowledge now. Nor that they (or, specifically, she) wants to kill me. Nor that she wants to kill me, but she. just. won't. But instead is teaching me sign language and is walking me to the potty and, worst of all, is making me stand in front of the mirror and making me look at plain little me next to gloriously beautiful her for _seven whole hours_ and calling that three seconds and then requiring that I call myself beautiful when everybody _in the whole world_ knows that just ain't so. No, none of those things were nagging away at my little tiny brain.

The thing that was nagging at my brain? _Why is Rosalie not wearing panties?_

"Yes, I am aware of that." was Rosalie's unperturbed response.

"Huh?" I was forcefully shaken from my reverie.

See, that's another thing I hate about her. I _know_ she can read my mind, because I've seen her do it, like, a zillion times, I've even seen her invade my dreams, and no, like, she was in my dreams, no, not like that, but that she actually _came into my dreams_ and she did whatever she wanted to do with me (which was _a whole lot, _including _throwing me into the river_ and I'm _not _going to forget that, Rosalie, so you can just watch yourself, 'cause I'll get you back, I swear!).

She knows I know this, but then she goes ahead and denies it every time, and then she goes and turns around and answers my thoughts, just like that, and pretends she's just answering my questions, and puts on that, 'oh, I'm so innocent; I'm just answering your question, is all, I'm not reading your mind at all,' when I know full well that she _is, the LIAR!_

But what can a girl do but play along with her mind-games, because she gets _really persnickety_ if you call her on anything, but when she calls you on stuff, does she let _you_ have your fully justified huff? _HUH? I ASK YOU!_

I swear to God, that woman/vamp/angel is gonna drive me nuts!

"I said," she said patiently, "that, yes, I am aware I am not wearing panties. Your question?"

"Well," I said hesitantly, but then I didn't see any other way around it. "Well, _why?"_

"I would have thought you would have notice that I wasn't wearing a brassiere as well._"_

Her statement was a question.

"Well, I noticed that, too."

"But you didn't ask about that." She stated this factually.

"Well, yeah, 'cause I know you don't need the support, just like me ..." Then I blushed and added quickly, "Well, I mean, not like me, 'cause ..." and then I swallowed in embarrassment, not finishing that in no way, shape or form was she just like me, "... but I don't need the support either, and you don't for some reason so I guess that's why you don't need to wear one."

"You figured all this out on your own, did you?" her tone was clipped and disparaging.

"Yes," I whispered, blushing, knowing she could hear me.

"Good for you," sarcasm dripping from her voice, "... but you couldn't figure out the rest?"

"No," I said simply, still looking down at the ground.

"And that's _bothering_ you, isn't it?" I heard the emphasis, and I knew that spelled trouble for me.

"Yes," I said.

"You really need to work on your posture," she stated.

I sighed and straightened my back a little bit as I trudged through the snow.

"... and you need to look the person in the eye when you address them, as that shows respect," she added, then said even more quietly, "and not to make eye contact is an insult ... to them."

My whole body tensed up, and I tasted bitterness in my mouth, ... but I still couldn't look at her.

"But what if you're shy?" I asked shyly.

"I am not shy," she stated reprovingly.

I sighed again.

"It isn't that hard." she scolded.

I felt my lips crush together, holding in the emotion welling up in my chest.

Simple walk to the potty, indeed.

I forced my eyes up to hers, my dun-colored eyes to her blazing golden ones with coal-black centers, my weak ones to her determined ones, and tried again: "But what if I'm shy?"

She looked at me for a whole second, and then slapped me on the face, hard, with her next words: "Then you need to stop being so selfish."

And she nodded her head up, once, as if saying, _take that, Miss I'm-too-shy-to-respect-you-Ms.-Goddess._

I gasped, and froze in my tracks, so she stopped alongside me, glaring right at my eyes, now misting over with the injurious insult.

"Rosalie," I gasped, "I didn't say anything about me being selfish, I said I was shy, that's why I couldn't loo..."

Her voice was cutting: "Did you ask me a personal question?"

There was nowhere to hide from her glare.

"Uh, yeah," I admitted.

She scowled. "Not, 'uh, yeah,' you either did or you didn't. _Don't prevaricate!"_

This was hurting more and more. A single tear fell from eye down my cheek, scarring it with icy cold as it burned its way down to be lost into my scarf.

"Yes, Rosalie," I said quietly, "Yes, I asked you a personal question."

"But you are concerned, not its impact on me at all, but how _you_ feel about _yourself_ in the asking?" Her voice rose to an incredulous pitch, even as the volume of her voice remained steady in normal speaking tones.

I didn't look at it that way.

I bit my lower lip, and blush, and looked away.

Then I forced my eyes to look back at her. "Yes, Rosalie," I said humbly, "that's what I did, I thought about how I would feel, not how you would feel when I said that."

Her eyes narrowed, and she grimaced.

"Then," she said coldly, "you need to stop being so selfish and concerning yourself with only you and your feelings and start thinking how what you do and what you say affect the recipient, yes?"

"Ye..."

I stopped, my obedient answer caught in my throat, even as I said it.

Because now, I just slapped myself hard, in the face, with my new realization.

"Do you?" I asked her, the surprise of my own realization filling my own voice.

She stopped.

From leaning in, scolding me, she drew herself erect.

"Very good," she said, but her compliment was delivered equally coldly. "You asked the question that noone dares to think, but you already know the answer, don't you?"

I nodded. I wish I could say I nodded with confidence, but I didn't. I nodded shakily, unsteadily.

You see: when you don't know where you stand, you also don't know on what you're standing ... I didn't know if I were on shaky ground or if I were making progress or if I was in big, big trouble.

I never did: when I felt I was in big trouble, Rosalie would be 'so pleased' with my 'progress' when all I was doing was feeling stupid and saying everything wrong and saying things I had no idea that meant what she thought they were supposed to mean. And when I was trying to be nice ...? That was so, so much worse. So much worse. I would try to say something nice to her, or try to help, or try to thank her for saving me again or feeding me or taking care of me, but instead of being pleased, she would turn on me and savage me for being so stupid, so wrong-headed.

Like now: I have this realization, and she says, 'Very good,' but the look in her face, the hardness of her eyes, tells me she means anything but that.

I nodded, mutely, trying to become smaller, to weather the coming storm of her answer.

She grimaced, displeased. "And what answer have you arrived at, then? How do you see me?"

"I..." I gasped, stuttering in fear of her anger, and in shame of her displeasure.

_"Answer me!"_ she snarled viciously.

There was nothing I could do to defend myself from her. When her voice cut, it cut right into me, into my bones, ... no: into my very marrow.

I swallowed past the lump in my throat and whispered my answer: "You don't give a _damn_ what anybody else thinks, Rosalie," I said, shocked that I said such a forbidden word.

Then I looked away from her hard, beautiful eyes. "You don't care what anybody else feels."

I whispered that last into the cold, crisp, callous air of the forest surrounding us, listening intently to our exchange. Listening to the sound of my heart breaking. She didn't care about anybody. She didn't care about one person in particular as she watched me sink lower and lower into the abyss of this snowy prison.

I felt Rosalie's cold, smooth, perfect hand touch my chin, and turn my head to face her again.

"You are correct," she said, coolly, as she stared right into my eyes, glaring, even, "I don't care what anybody else thinks, nor what anybody else feels."

"Then, why ..." I breathed out, fighting to control my emotions.

She waited, then raised an imperious eyebrow.

I soldiered on, finishing my question. "Then why do you tell me I have to?"

This seemed to please her, for I saw her press her lips to prevent her grin from showing.

"Listen to me," she said curtly, "I don't care what people think or feel, because, for the most part, they are all idiots — _all _of them! — and they don't deserve my good opinion, and I can't be trifled with being poisoned with their wrongheaded notions. And," she added, "yes, isn't that shocking! Who would dare hold that view? Noone, correct? We can't be thinking that somebody in this egalitarian society is _better than,_ because that just goes against the grain! 'Oh!'" she gasped in mock-surprise, "'Oh! Look at Rosalie! She's actually right, when all of us said the opposite! That must make us all idiots, and _we can't have that!'"_

She snorted derisively, dismissing all of us _idiots_ with a careless wave of her hand.

"But ..." I said.

_"Don't interrupt!"_ she pounced.

"You have something to learn," she commanded, "so don't insert your preconceived arguments that you've given absolutely no thought to, and are only repeating because somebody else told you, and it sounds good because it's _humane!"_

She spat out that last word like as if she were spitting out ... oh, I don't know, something that tasted terrible ... like bile ... like dung ... like me, Bella-the-dung-haired-idiot.

"But one thing I _do not_ do, girl," she continued forcefully, "is I do not disrespect the other person. If I am talking with another person? If I am asking them a question, then I've imposed on them, and the _least _I can do," she glared significantly at me, "is to show them respect by giving them my full attention."

"... even if they are idiots." I finished for her.

Rosalie _tsk_ed. "So headstrong," she sighed, looking at me regretfully. "Yes," she added, her tone softening, "even _though_ they _are_ idiots, I give them my full attention."

"Why?" I asked.

I was just asking why-questions all the time, but I didn't see any way out of asking them, except by just totally not understanding, and being entirely befuddled and confused.

"Because, girl," Rosalie said, her mercurial mood again being firm and strict and righteous, _"I rise above._ They may be pigs of men or empty-headed girls, but _I, I,_ am above all that, above _them,_ and they will _know_ they were in the presence of greatness, and their littleness, and their meanness cannot touch that, cannot touch me. Quite the opposite, in fact, for, having seen me, true decorum and uprightness, maybe they will have a height to which they can aspire, and, maybe, letting go of their pettiness, maybe one day they may reach up to something above themselves, beyond themselves, and be better persons than they ever hoped they could have been, seeing how I refuse to condescend to grovel at their level."

I just stared at her, taking it in, and not believing she had the _gall_ to say these things at the same time.

You had to hand it to her, she was so wrapped up in her conceit, she felt she was doing people a favor by walking all over them, and she had the absolute altruistic pride to be entirely blind to her own delusion.

I could never pull something like that off. Ever.

I mean, back at school, if anybody did that? They'd be laughed out of class, and the teacher would carry her by the arm the the Principal's office.

And if I stood up in the cafeteria, and made these bold statements?

I think my tongue would come out out of my mouth and strangle me before I could experience the shame I would feel of everybody staring, then pointing, then laughing and laughing and laughing at me as the ground opened up and swallowed me whole.

"In fact," Rosalie said thoughtfully, pulling me away from my own thoughts, "I'd prefer the company of people strong enough to admit their idiocy, admit their shortcomings, instead of being smug in the conceit of their own blindness."

"But, Rosalie," I countered, "I say that all the time! I say I'm stupid, and you don't, what did you say? 'prefer' that. No, you get all angry about it and shout at me!"

"The difference there, girl," she shot back forcefully, "is that I've been in the presence of distinguished men: scientists, financiers, capitalists, doctors, philosophers. I've walked in the first circles, and the difference between a snob and an idiot, a buffoon and braggart, and the truly great man, is that the great man admits his shortcomings, yes, and _delights_ in learning what he doesn't know, from a pretty young girl just out in society that, _oh, my God!_ has a head on her shoulders and views relevant and topical and who can hold her own in a conversation, be it about art, or music, or finance, or the latest news on the drought on the Midwest and what's to be done, and ..."

She paused for breath.

"The difference between them and their delight and learning what they didn't by admitting first that they don't know everything, or even the things they thought they did, and you admitting, what? your insufficiency? Is that they state what they do not know to advance into learning what they can. You? You don't admit you don't know. No, you crow it. You hide behind it. You use it as a justification to stay as plain, little you, because that's what you are, after all, you just admitted that, didn't you?"

She regarded me scornfully.

There was just no winning against her. Even when you did what she told you to do, she found a thousand reasons why you were doing even that wrong.

"At least they have some measure of respect, no: nobility, even, in delighting in what they can learn, by admitting they don't know everything. But you?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

Lost cause. That's what I read in her body, as she regarded me. She saw me as ... broken.

"So," Rosalie's stern voice brought me back to the present, "what have you just learned?"

Oh, mercy me! I didn't know school was in session, out here in the middle of this nowhere wilderness!

I collected myself, and tried to think what I was supposed to have learned in the vitriolic river of angry words that flowed from her mouth.

"Uh," I said, and winced at Rosalie's grimace, "um, you're supposed to show other people respect because ..."

Because why? Because they are idiots, and you are better than them? Because you're not supposed to be thinking of yourself and how you feel when you ask them a question? I kind of lost my train of thought.

"No," she cut me off curtly, "you are not supposed to show other people respect _'because ...' _of this or that, you are simply to show them respect."

"Oh," I said humbly.

"Try again," she ordered.

I looked at her. She was serious.

She just never let anything go.

I sighed, and said resignedly, "You're supposed to show people respect, Rosalie."

She nodded. "And I do," she stated coldly, "just as you are to do, from now on. Now, ask your question to me again ... _respectfully."_

I blushed angrily. _"Jeez, _Rosalie, can we just please drop it?"

"No," was her absolute response.

"Oh, come on!" I entreated. "Look, I'm sorry for bringing it up, but there's no respectful way to ask that, okay? I see that now, okay? So can we just forget it and move on?"

Rosalie brought herself upright fully and glared at me, a sun, reflecting the sun, and out here, both terribly cold.

"Wheat and chaff," she stated.

I brought my mittened hands to my face and covered my eyes, muttering an exasperated, _'Oh, Jiminy Cricket!'_ under my breath, but not even daring to think the real oath I wanted to exclaim with the same initials ... I didn't need to be whacked on the head now, too, on top of what-all else has happened on this 'peaceful' walk to the outhouse.

Rosalie glared at me. I sighed, and capitulated, "Would you kindly explain what you mean?" and added a _Miss Meanie, _with my glare.

"Yes," she said imperiously, "there's a difference between the few," she indicated herself, resting her hand on her chest, "and the many," she opened her hand and waved to the rest of the world.

She didn't point directly at me, but I can take a hint. I'm not stupid.

Well, not all the time.

"... and the difference is this," she continued, "the many start a thing, but for the most part, don't finish, and so they leave in their wake a lifetime of uncompleted works and broken promises. Have you heard the phrase, 'The road to Hell is paved with good intentions'?"

She waited for my answer, so I guessed she wasn't asking a rhetorical question. I nodded my head, mutely, just in case she was, so she wouldn't bite my head off.

Her eyes were hard as she examined me.

"Oh?" she asked sardonically, "do you know what it means?"

I gulped and nodded again.

"Explain it to me, then," she demanded.

You see, that's what I was afraid of. An essay question, right here in the middle of Cold, U.S.A., but if I had said, 'doi, doi, doi, no, I don't know what that means, Rosalie,' and gave her my best stupid-head look, then she would've been fully justified to hurl me in the Belle Fourche, however distant it now was from us, and this time, she wouldn't fish me out.

So, now I had to answer her.

"It means, Rosalie," I said, looking into her critical eyes, "that people mean to do good, but they mess it up, or something, and bad things happen instead."

Rosalie smirked. "Exactly," she said, "but moreso than that, these well-intending ... these well-_meaning_ people," she spat out the word, "can walk away from the messes they've made in their lives and, worse, in the lives of the people affected, and say, all _innocence, _'Oh, well, I _meant_ to do good, so ...' and they just walk away from what they, themselves, have caused, but because they _meant well_ it's all _okay, isn't it?"_

This I took to be a rhetorical question, so I just looked back into her angry eyes.

"Never taking responsibility for what they've done. Never cleaning up the messes they've made. And they say, 'Oh, well, let's forget it and move on,' but the thing is, they move onto make worse and worse messes in their lives and all the victims they afflict with their _good intentions."_

She paused, glaring at me, then continued, quietly.

"One way ticket to Hell, that is, running from something you've started because you refuse to look ahead to see the logical consequences of your actions, or, looking, you refuse to take responsibility for the unintended consequences that always come from an action."

She looked me up and down. I noticed that she had stopped taking about 'people' generally, and she was now talking to me and about me directly.

It hurt. A lot.

"Taking an action, doing something, asking a question, _always_ has unintended consequences, that's called _life, _and _living life!_ Or you can tuck your tail between your legs, hide in your corner, and let life roll right over you as you back away from everything you start."

I snickered. "Do I get to choose?"

Because I knew which way I would choose, if Rosalie allowed me to. She did give me a choice, after all.

You see: that's me trying to lighten the mood, a little bit. See?

Rosalie didn't see. Or if she did, she wasn't amused.

"You have been choosing," she said sadly. "You have been choosing your whole life to live small, in your small town, with your safe, quiet, small life, and what does your life amount to? And when you die your small, quiet, lonely death, what will it have meant?"

She waited a bit. I thought of making a crack of wondering if she wanted me to die big, then, but all my jokes were falling flat.

"And the different between the few, and the many? The difference between the ones who make something of their lives, and those who life rolls over? It's called 'integrity.' It's called 'being your word.' It's called 'finishing what you've started.' It's called 'doing what you have to, despite your fears.'"

"Do you know anyone in your small life and in your small, little town with this greatness? Or do you see little people living their petty lives?"

I felt myself get hot under my collar. "Ekalaka has good people. We're ..." and I blushed, not knowing how to defend the farmers, the merchants, the families of my small, little town, "... good people," I finished weakly.

"I'm not asking about 'good people,'" she said and waved dismissively, "'good people' meaning nothing to nobody, doing the same nothing they've always done for generations, being swept by the wave of this Great Depression and the meaninglessness of their lives. I'm asking have you seen greatness anywhere? In anybody? No, you've ..."

"My pa," I said, the words being wrenched from my chest.

She stopped and regarded me, finally measuring me as something more worthwhile than an ant to be crushed underfoot.

"He ..." I swallowed, and a tear trickled down my cheek, "he don't come across to you as nu-nothing, ..." It was hard to speak, but I pushed through my emotion, "... but he fought in the Great War and there's nothing he...he wouldn't do for a body in a tight spot or even j-just needing a hand and he ... he ..."

My lips pressed together, hard, and I dragged in a ragged breath as two, then three, more tears spilled out of my eyes, and I squeezed my eyelids shut for a moment, and then I looked at her, again, and I whispered, firmly, "... and he's a great man."

And I waited.

I saw a million thoughts pass in front of her, my captor, my tormentor, my ...

I couldn't finish that thought as the tears stopped, leaving dry, salty tracks on my cold cheeks.

Finally, she answered me, quietly, with a considered voice. "That you honor your father so, shows the greatness in you ..." and she paused, then added, "... and in him."

And she looked away, and I thought her whisper, "... and I will say nothing more regarding the matter."

And I don't know if the 'matter' was my pa, or greatness, or was she reflecting on her life, and her pa?

I didn't know.

"You have greatness in you," she addressed me gravely, "and I will _not_ permit you to extinguish it, nor to back away from it anymore."

Her crusade to make me ... whatever: a lady, or a great person, or choosing to be something or somebody, even she had to force me to do it.

"So," she said, her tone brightening a shade, as she turned back along the path, tugging my elbow for me to resume the walk, "ask me your question. Finish what you've started."

I snuffled. "So," I said, forcing some semblance of steadiness back into my voice, and confidence, that I didn't feel, "Rosalie, why don't you wear panties?"

I looked at her as I asked, walking along, to the potty, a place, I just now realized, where I'd be taking off the just-now-mentioned article of clothing to take care of my private business, ...

That Rosalie didn't give a fig about enough to ask me personal questions about.

I blushed.

Rosalie turned, and, seeing me looking at her as I asked, smiled warmly, ... encouragingly, at me.

"It's simple, really," she said factually.

As if anything were simple with her.

Then she turned the subject around on me. "What are panties for?" she asked, looking at me expectantly.

I gulped. "Gah! Um," I was taken aback ... obviously everybody knew what panties were for, so to ask a question was, well, a lot of things: not proper, you know? What's in the dark, you keep in the dark.

"Well," I said, "to cover your ..." and I paused, blushing, and whispered quickly, _"you know."_

"Yes, yes," she waved, rolling her eyes, "we know this, but _for what purpose ..._ or," and she paused then added, "for what purpos_es_ are the covering?"

What? This is a multiple answer embarrassing question quiz?

When would it ever end?

And I had the terrible realization, that me, being with Rosalie, it never would.

I shuddered.

"Um ..." then I looked at Rosalie helplessly.

She smirked. "So you just wear panties because you wanted to demonstrate to mommy you could dress yourself after she had been the one who was dressing you from your infancy?"

"No, Rosalie, _Jeez!"_ I exclaimed.

"Mmhm," Rosalie smirked dismissively, "so, then, _obviously, _you have a reason, or _reasons,_ for covering as you say, your _'you know,'_ so what are they?"

She regarded me as if she were looking at a little child.

"Well, ..." and I stopped.

"You have to push beyond everything, girl," Rosalie chided softly. "You have to push beyond what everybody tells you what is right and what is wrong, what is acceptable and what is forbidden, and why are these things this or that? There are no reasons given, ever, are there? You wear panties because you have to wear panties. But what are there the whys and the wherefores of it? If you don't push past these rules that everyone gives to you, just because everybody else does these things and tacitly agrees them them, then you'll lived this boxed up little life, following the herd to the end, and you find that end to be over a cliff, or dying, parched, in the dustbowl, no beginning, no middle, no end, just you, blindly following everybody else who're all just as blind as you."

She waited for this to sink in.

I mulled this over.

"So," I concluded, "I don't have to wear panties just because everybody else is wearing them?" I paused, and quickly added, "I mean 'everybody else', I mean, 'girls', 'cause ..."

"No, no, no!" she interrupted impatiently. "Everybody else is wearing panties, because, yes, everybody else is wearing panties, but think, girl, there are ..."

She glared at me and snarled, "Argh! Do I have to tell you everything?"

Well, given the track record, it seemed that, yes, she had to tell me everything.

"People, yes: girls," she corrected scornfully, for my 'benefit,' "wear panties primarily for two reasons, they catch discharge and they prevent abrasion of your nethers from rubbing against outer garments."

Oh. I could've told her that. Why didn't she just ask me that in the first place?

"So," she concluded, "now you know why panties are superfluous in my case."

She looked at me, triumphantly.

I saw that triumph turn to surprise, then disappointment as she looked at stupid me looking like a total stupid failure, stupidly not getting it.

She sighed.

"So," I said sadly in defeat, "I guess this is the part where I say, 'No, Rosalie, no I don't get it, and could you please explain it to me, and maybe try not to be super furious with me if that's possible, please?'"

"And ..." I added quickly, "please, Rosalie, I'm not trying to make you angry, okay? I'm ... okay, I don't get it, okay? I don't get anything, okay? But I'm trying, okay? I'm really trying, okay?"

Rosalie turned away and looked at the ground. "Okay," she shrugged.

But, in her tone, I could tell it wasn't okay.

And I could tell, that, even as I was trying so hard, all the time, to try to ... I don't know ... be better ... be a person that was, well, _worthy,_ of just being in her presence, I could tell that she was trying, super-hard, to ...

... put up with me.

Loser me.

"I work so hard," she said, "I work so hard to reach you, to pull you up where I know you can be, and then, ..."

She paused, looking down at the ground and said sadly, "then when you've gone beyond yourself, ... beyond me, ... you'll spread your wings, and fly, and the gates of Heaven will be in your grasp, but ..."

She looked back at me, "but you have to meet me half-way. I reach down to pull you up, but you have to reach up, up, above and beyond yourself."

"I'm trying," I whispered, repeating my affirmation, trying to reach her in her sadness and loneliness in the impossible task of whatever she saw she had to do for me.

She continued looking at the ground, but then she looked at me.

"I see that," she said. "I see you trying." And she smiled, sadly, at me.

"So, ..." I said slowly, "there's hope? ... So, ..." I mulled over this, "you haven't given up on me?"

She smiled at the ground, and reached out and patted my arm.

A warmth suffused me, heating the insides of my body, spreading out to my arms and legs, and I felt the heat expand from my chest to the insides of my coat and warm my cheeks.

And I smiled at the ground.

We walked in silence for a moment. It was, finally, a nice, peaceful moment.

"So," she said quietly, breaking the silence gently, "I will tell you why I am not wearing panties, why I do not need to."

"Thank you," I said humbly. The outhouse was coming into view. I don't remember passing the tree she felled then impaled with the cross.

I don't remember most of the walk, in fact, I just remember her, and fighting so hard over the simplest of things, a stupid why-question.

She reached out and removed my mitten, and held my hand.

I gasped at the touch, the intimacy of it.

"Do you feel that?" she asked.

Feel what? My heart trying to jump out of my chest?

"Yes," I gasped.

"My hand, in yours?" she asked calmly.

"Yes," was all I could manage.

"My hand, all of me, is the prime material, or, put another way, it's purely 'it' or 'what.' Do you understand?" she asked, searching my eyes for understanding.

I nodded my head obediently.

But I didn't understand her, so I frowned, and admitted, "No, Rosalie, I don't understand."

She smiled wistfully. "It ... I ... this stone that I am, is matter reduced to its simplest form, it's undistinguished, absolute potential, purely negative, ... indestructible. That's why I found your prescient dream incredulous. Fire doesn't harm me; it doesn't touch me. How could it?"

She slipped her hand out of mine, and gave me back my mitten.

My hand burned from the icy fire of her touch. I put back on my mitten, and as I did, my hand tingled, missing her touch.

"So, that dispenses with one of the primary reason for wearing panties ... I can't be abraded down there; there is nothing, no friction, no pores for outer garments to catch against, to abrade and to rub raw."

"There is nothing there, just a memory of what could have been, and now what can never be," she said to the ground, then turned to me. "Do you understand me?"

I nodded solemnly, remembering her regret-filled whispered _'always'_ of last night.

She continued into the silence, "And the other reason is that I have no discharge, not anymore, so ..."

She shrugged.

And I remembered her regret that I could have my periods, and she couldn't anymore.

I wondered, and then I knew, in my wondering: is that ... _her?_ Is she all loss and regret?

Is she only looking at life from the outside, and never, ever able to participate in it, to fix her mistakes, to enjoy a moment of happiness?

Was that why her smiles were sad when she reflected on her former life and her current state?

"Well," she added quickly, "I have no _involuntary_ discharge, so ..."

She paused, then visibly brightened at the outhouse right in front of us: "Ah!" she exclaimed, "here we are, you go take care of your business."

She shooed me into the outhouse — you could almost say she _pushed_ me into it — and quickly shut the door, nearly in my face.

She didn't light me a candle, but that was okay, as light came in through the slit of the window at the top of the structure and through little cracks between the wood slats. She didn't provide me heat from coals from the fire, but I reasoned, that she couldn't haven't walked alongside me, instead of speeding me back and forth as fast as lightning.

But she _pushed me_ and _slammed the door _in my face, like as if she were embarrassed about something? Impossible! Or hiding something. Hiding what? What did she say last to me before she pushed me out of sight.

I dropped trou, sat down on the cloth-covered cool seat, and wondered.

"Rosalie, ... what does 'not _involuntary _discharge' mean?" I asked as I ... 'discharged' my ... whatever, okay? and never you mind, anyway.

Rosalie minded. I heard her sigh heavily.

I think that's what she's hiding.

But what does 'not involuntary discharge' mean?

I had no idea.

I had a nagging feeling I'd soon find out. And, from the sound of her sigh, I think I just might regret finding out.

* * *

**A/N:**

1. leucotomy was the term first used for the procedure we now call lobotomy. A new procedure in the 1930s, much debated at the time, but used for decades thereafter.

2. 'Jiminy,' is a contraction of 'Jesu Domini'


	57. Spontaneity and Confidence

**Chapter Summary**: Least-ways she could've acknowledged that I used the word 'spontaneity' so ... well: spontaneously, but no, she's all like ... well, _Rosalie_ ... then, she's, you know? ... silly, and then I'm, like, silly, and I thought we were having fun. Honestly, I thought we were having fun._ God, _I'm so stupid. Like: there's a news flash.

* * *

I was just standing up from the throne and was going to bang open the door to the potty to get Rosalie explain what she meant by 'not _involuntary_ discharge,' when the door _did_ jerk open, but not under my power.

Under the power of someone much more, ... well, powerful.

_"Gah!"_ I exclaimed, as I faced, not the door, but Rosalie, holding a steaming pail of water.

She didn't give me time to recover. "It sounded like you would need to wash," depositing the pail at my feet, along with two washcloths.

Then she looked down, and glared at me accusingly.

"What?" I asked defensively.

"You redressed without washing yourself?" she glowered.

"Well, ..." I began, ... like it's as if this is the top-of-the-line 3-star commodes, right here in the middle of nowhere, with its own bidet and everything ... _not!_

Rosalie slammed the door in my face, not allowing me to explain.

"I'll be right back," her voice floated through the door, as I imagined it struggled, panting, to reach my ears from a Rosalie running back to the cabin at more than one-hundred miles per hour, I'd be willing to bet!

I sighed. My ruminations had probably taken more time than Rosalie's round trip, and I felt I had lost the upper hand of the conversation with her almost jumping right in here with me, checking on my business.

I sat back down, in the privacy of the privy, and washed my privates.

Just as I was patting myself dry, the door creaked ajar and a hand whiter that snow shoved a pair of panties onto my lap.

_"GAH!"_ I exclaimed. "Warn a girl!"

"Change into those," was the imperious and impersonal reply.

_"Gee, thanks!"_ I shot back sarcastically.

Nothing.

_Jeez!_ Leastways she could be baited into being angry with me for catching me off guard like that all the time and embarrassing me, but no, she refused even to reply, ticking me off further.

I sat, fuming, the offered clean panties on my lap. I looked down at them, ... they were cool where her hand held them, and I smelled the faintest, sweetest scent of honeysuckle and rose on them from her touch.

I sighed. I could stew in here in the dark, or I could be her obedient little ... okay, I don't know what, because my mind recoiled from the word _'slave,'_ with her bossing me around like this, but that's exactly how I felt like. That's exactly how I felt like she treated me.

But if I dared think that, you know darn well who'd be screaming in my face about my wrong-headed notions, right?

I sighed; yes, again, and kicked off my boots, and got un-re-dressed. And yes, that's a word, too, okay?

...

I opened the door, and exited the potty, handing Rosalie the cloths and clothing of pre-clean-Bella, if you know what I mean.

"Hey," I said shyly, handing her the things.

"Hey," she said, taking the things, wrapping them around a stone, and _hurling_ it over the treetops and out of sight.

_Wait!_ I thought, surprised, _she sounds shy too!_

I looked at her critically, but she came right into my space, reaching behind me into the outhouse and pulling out the pail.

Her face was cool, impassive, unreadable.

But, to me, having been with her for a while now, her being unreadable meant that she was_ making_ herself unreadable, as opposed to trying really, really hard not to show me that she was concerned, or embarrassed, or, ... okay: _scared._

I felt I had the advantage again.

"So," I asked breezily, "about that 'not _involuntary_ discharge' comment ... what did you mean by that?"

Rosalie pursed her lips and gestured back toward the cabin, walking at a self-controlled normal pace.

_Bingo!_ I crowed in my thoughts.

I followed along, my spirits lifting.

After a moment of silence, I became perplexed.

"Rosalie," I said, and I tried not to let either concern nor irritation touch my voice, "are you gonna answer or ...?"

I trailed off my question expectantly.

Rosalie glanced at me quickly. Measuring me. Always measuring me.

I felt, often, when she looked at me, she looked in disgust or disdain, finding me lacking.

I didn't feel that this time. She was critical, as is her way, but I saw a measure of ... _respect?_ in her regard.

She grimaced. "You're not going to let this go," she said quietly, almost as a question, almost hoping.

I answered back, equally quietly, but also equally gravely. "I remember somebody telling me I should finish what I've started."

"Good memory," she spoke to the air in front of us.

I did now look at her in concern. "Do you regret telling me that?"

Because that's what I heard in her voice: regret.

She turned her head and looked at me as we walked along this cold, bright, sunny, quiet morning. "No," she said firmly. "No, I don't regret saying this."

"But, so, ..." I hesitated, "why are you ... _sad_ I'm asking now?"

"I'm not ..." she began quietly.

_"Don't lie to me, Rosalie," _I cut in sharply. "I'm not stupid, and I don't like it when you're ..."

"... so _Rosalie?"_ The person, ... _goddess,_ ... finished for me, her lips quivering upward, albeit sadly.

"No," I said, "this isn't you being _Rosalie; _ this is you being _sad."_ I clarified angrily.

"So, you now have categories for my moods, do you?" she asked quietly.

"Yes," I shot back, "and I don't like it, Rosalie, and I don't get it. You told me to finish what I start, and now you're sad that I'm doing just that."

She was thoughtful for a moment, a quiet thoughtful.

"A few things," she finally broke the silence.

"Okay ..." I offered carefully. I wondered if I should ask if I should tighten the straps on my saddle. Her _'a few things'_ always stung.

"Okay," she smiled encouragingly at me, a smile from which I got zero encouragement in my gut as it tightened for her reasoned and then angry belittling words that always hit me in the stomach like a prizefighter raining down one-two punches.

"Firstly," she said, "'finishing what you start,' does not mean, 'start any and every little thing that pops into your head.' It means quite the opposite, in fact, doesn't it?"

She asked me, confirming that I should know this, looking into my eyes for this knowledge that I should have.

She didn't seem to find it, so she explained. "So, 'finish what you start,' means choose your battles carefully. Fight the ones you must, and the ones that aren't important, that is to say, that you are not willing to put your life on the line for ..."

She paused, then shrugged, smiling, waiting.

Then she frowned, continuing, obviously displeased in the very definite _non-Eurika!_ look in my eyes indicating that I really _didn't_ get was she was hinting at.

"The ones you aren't willing to but your life on the line for, _let them go, _or if you do commit to them, _commit to them like your life depends on it._ Otherwise, you're just like everybody else ... a nobody, meaning nothing, because they just open their mouths to say whatever just popped into their heads without even thinking through the consequences and ramifications, and why don't they think these things through? Because 'oh, I'm just saying, ... it doesn't _mean_ anything, really, I'm just asking, is all' and they live their meaningless, pointless lives opening their mouths so the sounds can come forth that mimic a babbling brook, signifying nothing from the nobodies that they are and always will be."

"So," she turned to me, smiling, hardness in her eyes, "when you asked your question just now, was it important to you, or where you just speaking out loud the burst of curiosity that intrigued you, and nothing more?"

_Ouch!_ I thought, feeling the blow of her words, an open-palmed slap across my face. _Ouch, ouch, ouch, _and _outie-ouch!_

Rosalie smirked at me, superior her, looking at inferior me.

I stopped in my tracks just then, and thought, really, really hard. I thought about what she said, and why I asked my question.

I mean, sure, ... I thought to myself, ... and paused, and collected my thoughts.

... I mean, sure, I continued more strongly: I asked the question because, _zing!_ it was right there in my head, and I _had to know!_

But ...

... I felt a warmth, a cold, intellectual warmth of understanding _hit me, _and what _hit me_ was_:_

But that doesn't mean that it can't also be important, too, right?

I looked at her, the light of understanding dawning on my face.

Her own face stayed hard, but her eyes narrowed, remeasuring me, her opponent.

I hoped to _God_ I was her _worthy_ opponent for once, for just this once in my life.

I answered carefully: "I asked you because it's important, Rosalie."

She looked at me scornfully. Was she seeing me as that girl who only answered the question the 'right' way because she wanted to answer the question the way the other person asking wanted to hear? just to stay out of trouble?

Was Rosalie actually pre-judging me? _mis-_judging me?

I felt a tightness in my chest, as I felt myself ready to fight with her, to _prove_ to her I'm not the idiot she thinks I am.

"Oh, really?" she asked, contemptuously. "And just how is this thing important to you?"

I looked back at her. "Because it's important to you."

She drew back, just a touch, and I felt the tightness in my chest ease, just a little tiny bit, at her miniscule, yes, retreat. But a retreat, none-the-less.

Her next question wasn't conciliatory at all, but resumed her attack with renewed vigor: "Howso?"

"I don't know," I admitted, feeling myself weak for admitting my weakness, but then I firmed up my resolve. "I don't know," I repeated more strongly, "so that's why I asked."

Rosalie paused a moment.

"Okay," she conceded in a tone that didn't give an inch. "I'll grant you you've thought the importance of this question through."

It was so hard to breathe, the tightness in my chest was almost strangling me from the inside, it felt like we were sparring, but for real, for life or death, but I didn't see how I could back down or back out, ... I could only see her: her fierce, determined gaze, and nothing else.

"But," she continued, unabated, "did you think through the consequences of your question? Did you think how I would respond? And how you would respond to that? And then my answer? And then your resolution? Did you see it all the way to a satisfactory resolution? Or did you think I would just answer this, just like that, and that would be that?"

My throat constricted. "Can I answer by saying I _hoped_ you'd just answer?"

The grin on her face became cold and cruel.

"You _may_ answer that way," she sneered, "if you wish to answer thoughtlessly."

_Ouch, _I grimaced, feeling as if I hadn't lost ground, but had lost everything I fought so hard for.

I tried, desperately, to regain just a little bit of ground on my sinking ship. Wait, that thought doesn't make sense, right? A ship wouldn't be on the ground, and it wouldn't be sinking there.

_Shoot!_ Rosalie's even making me critique the thoughts I think just to myself as an aside!

"Rosalie," I entreated, "you can't say that!"

"Yes, I can," she retorted, unyieldingly. "I can, and I did."

"How can you say that!" I demanded. _That's just not fair!_ I added the petulant thought.

She hissed an angry _"You knew!"_ at me, and seeing the shock on my face, added: "You _knew_ when you asked your question, once, twice, even before asking it at all, that this is something _important_ to me, to _Rosalie Lillian Hale, _and, knowing that, you _knew_ it wouldn't be easy."

"Is anything with you ever?" I whispered out of the side of my mouth.

She drew herself upright and crossed her arms, regarding me, again, as the nothing that I was. "Yes, it is," she said coldly. "When you think, _then_ speak. When you think, _then _act ... _rightly ..._ things are simple, straightforward, and easy."

I lost.

I lost. God, I've lost.

"So," I said, my voice breaking, "you're telling me right now, that whenever anything's hard, it's my fault?"

I almost lost the ability to speak the last few words of my question, I was so overcome by the incredulity of it, her utter and complete condemnation of me.

Then Rosalie, being _Rosalie, _looked me right in the eye, and answered, her cold, cruel, voice spearing my heart. "Yes. That's what I'm saying: it's your fault that things are hard."

_"GAWD!" _I finally shrieked, unable to contain my emotion.

She just regarded me, distant, remote, stone, as the sound of my voice echoed around the silent forest.

She was so totally different from this morning. This morning, that is, _earlier_ this morning, as it was still before noon, when I was so furious I couldn't answer her question, she held me until I could breathe again, but now, ... now, she was just ... so ... _hard_ on me.

And I didn't know why.

She regarded me then ...

How do I say it? _Didn't _soften? _Didn't _back down? But did she relent?

I don't know.

She tugged at my elbow, and we walked, me trudging through the snow, very slowly, alongside her, matching my pace, with, it seemed, infinite patience.

Heck, why not? She's won.

I asked in a very small voice: "So I have to think out everything I say and everything I do from now on? What kind of life is that, Rosalie?"

"An _examined_ life," she answered coolly and uncompromisingly.

"But, c'mon, Rosalie," I whined, "that's just too hard! Nobody can do that. Not all the time!"

Rosalie was quiet for a moment.

I realized, that ... Rosalie, being quiet, was doing exactly what she was telling me I had to do. She was living her words: she was thinking through what she was going to say, before she said it. There was no way I could fault her for hypocrisy, because I saw her doing everything she said, everything she believed in.

And it wasn't _hard_ for her to do that, ... she just did do that ... that just how she _is._

But her next words surprised me: "Perhaps not," she said quietly.

I had expected her to say something resolute like: 'yes, you can, and you shall, weak and frail girl!' but she didn't say that at all.

I swallowed my surprise.

"Perhaps not," she said again, "there are times for things, times for laughing and times for being serious, and when you are laughing, you don't need to plan out your moment-by-moment enjoyment, as that rather spoils you living in that moment, don't you think? But when, like here, you are learning, you are seeking out the truth, then you have to apply your mind — all your faculties, in fact — to achieve your end. For, after all, if you do not apply yourself fully, you will not obtain all of what you needed to learn, or all of the truth ... and a half-truth is oftentimes more harmful than the ignorance that proceeded it: if you don't know something, there's very little chance of you being harmed by it, as you don't encounter it; you don't see it. But a 'learned' half-truth gives rise to prejudices and superstitions, and they are at the root of many evils in the world that man visits upon man."

"Like vampires existing," I put in quietly.

Rosalie turned to me then, and smiled, and even encouragingly at that: "Exactly!"

I shook my head in utter confusion. "But, Rosalie, okay: this isn't news to you, but vampires _do_ exist."

I was pretty sure of this fact by now.

Her smile turned into a grin. "They do," she admitted, "but how many people have been burned at the stake or have been decapitated because they've been falsely accused of being a witch or a vampire, when, in fact, they may have been mentally unstable, or be too smart for the superstitious town-folks' liking, or lived on their own, away from society, but no: the mob comes out, and burns them out of house and home, and the stake awaits because they have such lovely pale skin ..."

Here Rosalie stroked my cheek, and I felt my face burn at her touch.

"... or they ask too many questions that are uncomfortable to the figures in authority, and because 'they' are a girl, they label her a witch and throw her in the lake, and if she floats, then that proved their suspicion, and they fish her out and murder her, and if she doesn't float, then she drowns. 'Ah,' they say: 'too bad, so sad,' and now she's out of the way, and people can go back to living their lives with their beliefs without the uncomfortable truth-seeker in the way of them reaping a good harvest."

"You see," she said quietly, "the half-truth is not that vampires exist. The ignorance is not believing that they do exist at all. The half-truth is all the myths people tell themselves about us, believing they can protect themselves from what we really are with their garlic and crosses, and so believe they can kill people who they think are vampires. This half-truth has probably caused more deaths because people to kill people who they _thought_ were vampires. Perhaps even moreso than the deaths caused by a real vampire preying on their hovel of a village, and that chance being slim to none for most of the world."

"So you see how not thinking things through, not applying yourself fully, can lead to consequences much more harmful than if you left a course of action be?"

Rosalie looked at me for understanding.

I pursed my lips.

"A couple of things?" I asked humbly.

Rosalie smiled. "Of course," she said easily.

"So it's better not to do anything, to ask anything, because if you do it wrong, then ..."

"Wrong_ly,"_ Rosalie corrected.

I sighed and continued, "So if you do it wrong_ly_," I glared at her, but her smile was undiminished, "then you're worse off than just not asking at all?"

Rosalie smirked. "What do you think the answer is to your question?"

I took in a breath. "Well, I guess ..."

She added quickly, "Think about it carefully."

_"I am,"_ I shot back fiercely.

Rosalie nodded, acknowledging me ... for once.

"Well," I continued, thinking hard ...

Thinking hard is hard work, I've come to find, much to my disappointment and displeasure. I felt like a headache was just waiting to take advantage of me doing all this hard thinking.

"Well," I said, "I don't think so. I think ... okay, I _know,_ that when I find something out, or when I learn how to do something, I'm better off. When I learned how to ride, I could get around the county better than just walking, and that helped Pa, and ... like: the lightbulb. That was somebody who did something by learning about it and making it work, and everybody's better off because of that, right?"

I looked to Rosalie for confirmation. She grinned, pleased.

"Good," she said, "yes: knowing something is better than living in ignorance."

"Okay," I said. "Then, but the other thing is this, if I have to be thinking through everything, then ... what about spontaneity?"

I was more than a little bit pleased that I could have a conversation with somebody and use the word 'spontaneity' and have it be totally natural, just like that. Not like back at school, where the word for the day was 'spontaneity' and you had to use that word three times that day when you were speaking.

Talk about totally contrived sentences: 'I went to the cafeteria and bought my lunch with spontaneity!'

"What about it?" Rosalie asked.

I wondered if she were asking about my lunch at the cafeteria.

But I think she was rather above such trifling concerns of what a cowgirl at for her school lunch ... that is: before she dropped out of school to help Pa.

"Well," I addressed her question, "I mean, like, ..."

"Work through your thoughts, and then choose your words with care."

Rosalie said that with, like, infinite patience, like a mommy correcting her daughter, and that _annoyed_ me.

I _tsk_ed. "It's not easy for me, Rosalie," I said, controlling my temper.

"Who said anything about it being easy?" Rosalie demanded.

"But that's just it!" I countered. "I mean, like, artists and poets and musicians, they are ... they make these incredibly beautiful things, right? Amazing things, that nobody's ever seen before or thought of, and they do it all so easily, but you're saying I have to think through everything, and that just kills that creative spark that, well, gave me the idea in the first place to ask, or to wonder, or ... whatever: to see something beautiful, right? Do you want me to kill that in me, because now I have to think everything through?"

Rosalie stopped and tilted her head to one side, contemplating me.

For a walk to the outhouse and back, this sure was a long walk ... it was like her 'oh, we'll just do three seconds of mirror time' time ... that is: twenty-seven hours, and don't you screw it up, because we'll start right over from the beginning if you do!

"There is a place for spontaneity ..." Rosalie began.

"Not for me anymore, according to you," I bit back, a little bit miffed.

Okay, I said that maybe more than a _'little bit'_ miffed.

Rosalie spread her hands apart: "May I continue?" she asked patiently.

_Hmmphf!_ "Yes," I almost pouted my reply.

Rosalie gave me a sad smile, "Those artists and composers you've mentioned ... are any of them in your acquaintance?"

"No, but ..." I began, sullen.

"Shhh," she shushed me, gently. "I have had several in mine."

_Of course_ she has, and now's the part where she tells me I'm an idiot, ...

Again.

I just wanted to sit down in the snow and cry. Nothing I could say to her ever made a dent. She always had an answer to everything I said.

"And," she said, softly, "I've watched them create. Yes, their works are amazing, beautiful, revealing, transcendent ... that is artists of the highest calibre are able to create works like these, and then able to repeat the impossible of creating original art ... again, ... but how long does it take them to produce a painting? Or a minuet? At our house we retained an artist of some talent, and I watched him for two weeks just taking up space, eating, sleeping, looking out the window, doing _nothing,_ or so I thought. I had in mind to ask mother to have him thrown out like the baggage he was! But then, one day, he gets up from the couch in the sitting room and tears off to his studio. Not more than an hour later he comes back with a completed work: a masterpiece of lush, dark tones with just a hint of light at the center, the heart of the piece. ..."

She paused recalling that moment from her previous life.

"And then I saw, in retrospect, that all that time that I had thought he was doing nothing but occupying our space and eating our food, he was actually working, perfecting his conception so that the finished work was simple, and beautiful."

She looked at me. "Creativity? Spontaneity? Yes, they are the spark of invention, but then comes the long, grueling process of honing that spark, tempering and molding it into exactly what the artist needs to produce: a perfect work, from that spark, yes, but only fully realized after a long period of trials tested and refined in fire."

"Do you see what I'm saying to you?" Rosalie asked me gently.

I turned away, looking at the ground, and wiped away an angry tear.

"Are you sorry you've asked your question?" she asked quietly.

_"Very,"_ I answered just as quietly, but with oh, so much more fervor.

_Note to self_ ... file this under "Bella verses vampires" ... and that note is 'ask questions whenever you want to be reminded just how _really stupid_ you are.'

"Well," she asked calmly, "are you willing to move beyond your sorrow?"

Okay, I pondered that question from her for awhile, but I couldn't make head nor tail of it.

If you were in my shoes, would you?

I capitulated. "I don't know what you mean, Rosalie," I said humbly.

Or I tried to say it humbly, ... that is: not petulantly.

"What I mean," Rosalie said, "is that you were so sure of yourself a moment ago, and now, you're not, correct?"

_Rub_ my face in it, why don't you Rosalie? My black thoughts muttered into the darkest recesses of my mind.

"Yes," I finally admitted.

"Well, then," she continued, "are you willing to move beyond your personal feelings that cloud the matter, so we can discuss the issue at hand, or are you going to be having this conversation with yourself so loudly about you and your own hurt feelings that anything I say will be drowned out by your own thoughts shouting silently, but louder than I can possibly scream in your ear, in which case I might as well enjoy the rest of the walk in silence with my sullen companion?"

I grinned bitterly. Again, Rosalie was giving me a choice that wasn't a choice at all. I could be selfish and sulk and ruin her day, and it'd be all my fault, or I could put aside me being a crybaby and try to act my age for once in my life.

I blew out a long sigh, collecting myself, trying to restore calm to myself and quell the darkness of my thoughts inside me.

"Okay," I said finally.

I felt Rosalie's eyes on me.

I didn't know if I was up to the task of returning her gaze, but, I felt I had to try.

I looked at her, and smiled weakly.

She looked surprised, and the smile she returned was genuine.

"Good," she said, pleased.

Now it was my turn to be surprised. I felt an attack of the giggles try to sneak up on me. She crushes me, then she crushes me for sulking about it, and then I try to put on a happy face on about it for her sake, and she's pleased as punch? And that's 'good'? Because what's going on in my insides is anything but 'good.'

How, again, was that 'good'?

Other than, ... then I had to crush this next thought from overwhelming me, ... other than that weak little slave, that is: me, submitted to Mistress Rosalie and was told to be happy about it, so that's what her slave did, because that's what she's supposed to do, and that's why it's 'good'?

I tried to drop that thought into a little box in my mind, wrap and seal that box, and bury it three thousand miles away from me.

But somehow I knew that I couldn't throw that thought far enough without it boomeranging on me. Rosalie, I realized, had actually mellowed since I first met her, and she kidnapped me, but I felt myself getting more easily irritated and less forgiving in my heart with her.

I wondered. Was I giving up hope? The way she harangued me, it was like ... she never gave me any quarter, and when I tried to be accommodating or friendly or helpful, she would instantly pounce on even that and turn it against me somehow.

I was tired: tired playing these mind games with no clear rules and no end in sight.

And Rosalie looked determined to go on just doing that, and convinced that it was for my own good.

I wasn't so convinced.

Maybe even this was one of her mind games: as she lectured and berated me, maybe she was seeing how much I would take until I broke? Or maybe it wasn't, and she was just doing what she always did, what had been done to her, so that's all she knew: cruel, hard, harsh, demanding life in a super-rich family and in finishing school or wherever where your every move and thought was judged and found unsatisfactory or in need of constant improvement.

What if that was her life? her childhood? And that's all she knew? That the only way you could talk to people is to prove to them you're (way) smarter than what they are so you could lecture them left and right.

I looked at her, thinking these thoughts, and wondered if she wanted me to be like that.

_Well, I'm sorry, Rosalie_, I thought, _but you're in for a big disappointment, or a surprise, because I'm not you, and that's not how I am. I'm not going to push people around and make them feel stupid all the time because I'm smart or anything. _

_That's just not who I am, Rosalie, and you can't make me be that way._

Thinking that, looking at her, a goddess in these snowy woods, I felt a measure of my confidence return, a measure of myself. A _small_ measure, yes, but I felt it: a little bit of me, returning to me.

She could win an argument against me, _any_ argument, probably eventually, but that doesn't mean I'm not me anymore. I could be me, even if she were right and I were wrong, and it may be okay or not, or I may feel crushed by her, or feel terrible...

... but I'd still be me.

Rosalie looked at me, still pleased at I could do the simple thing, like lose an argument with her, but look her in the eye, afterward. I wonder if she realized what happened in me, that in losing the fight over me asking my question, because I wanted to know, I found, not the answer to the question, but I found myself again, ... that is, a little bit of myself again.

And that did feel ... 'good.'

Just like she said.

It's funny. I lose. I despair. I think I'm no better than her, okay: slave, and ... going through all that, I ... win myself back.

I mean, I still lose, and she looks like she's going to keep going on this, and, by golly, forever about it, I'm thinking.

But, ... okay. She's her, ... but I'm still me, and I can accept her as her, ... sometimes.

So she darn well tootin' better start learning to accept me.

If not, ... I might just have to put my foot down.

See if she likes that!

"Okay," she continued, turning back toward the path back to the cabin, oblivious of the new-me, walking alongside her. "So that's one thing: your question is important, fine, but if it is important to you, you have to commit to it; you have to see it through to the end."

She glanced at me as we walked: "You have to be willing to fight for something that's important to you."

"That's hard," I pointed out quietly.

"Yes," she answered as quietly, "that's hard."

"Was everything in your life hard, Rosalie?"

Rosalie was quiet for a while as we walked through the woods.

I suppose she didn't have to answer every question I asked her. It's not like there's some rule about it. I mean there is: somebody asks you a question, you just answer it, one way or another. Was Rosalie not answering me now showing me that that was another rule I just blindly followed for no reason?

And I knew the answer to my question to her already.

Everything in her life was hard. If it wasn't, she just walked right over that to the next hard thing she could find, the next fight she could pick.

Until she died.

What a terrible ... _waste!_

Just fighting until life rolled right over her. And she's so pretty, and smart, she could've had anything she wanted in life, and she could've lived her life any way she wanted to.

And she picked the hardest way, every time.

I felt a bit sorry for her, but I hoped she didn't notice, or feel that in me toward her.

Rosalie hates pity.

She shrugged.

"So," she said, dismissing my question. "Back to the _relevant_ question."

She emphasized the word _'relevant'_ just so slightly, getting me back on track.

I wonder if she sees me as scatterbrained.

"...I find it difficult to discuss this with you," she continued, "because I really don't know who I'm addressing..."

I looked at her and whispered, resolutely: _'Me.'_

"Yes," she replied, looking at me, smiling, "quite."

Then she said, "But what do you know?" she asked.

And I felt that to be a rhetorical question.

It was, for she continued in the same breath: "And I'm afraid that you know nothing in this matter, so how to proceed?"

She regarded me, thinking, and I wondered what she was thinking.

"You were young when your mother left you," she said.

"Yes," I said, feeling the emptiness, the void, Rosalie's words recalled me of that, and the years of just me and Pa, Pa and me.

"Did she ..." Rosalie paused. "Did she speak to you about the ways of nature before she left?"

Rosalie looked down below my abdomen.

"No," I said.

She hummed thoughtfully. "It must have come as quite a shock to you when your cycles started."

"Yes, it was," I answered simply, but remembering the terror I felt the first time, me bleeding, thinking I was broken, or that I was dying and suffering terrible internal bleeding.

_'Yes, it was,'_ was about all that could be said of the panic I felt.

"So," her voice bringing me back, "Your mother wasn't there when you had your first period, correct? But your father was. What did he do? How did he handle it?"

I chuckled at this, and Rosalie looked at me quizzically.

"Well," I explained, "if I wasn't scared to death that I was somehow torn inside and was bleeding out from inside, and it wasn't stopping, and I was so afraid that I was bleeding to death, ..."

Here she turned a pure-while pale.

_"Sorry,"_ I whispered, looking away. I could never get used to her being so ... _attached_ to me and the blood in me, even as she told me this, over and over again.

"Well," I continued, more subdued, "If I wasn't scared to death myself, I would've been more concerned for Pa..."

I felt Rosalie smile. "He was concerned?" she asked with a hint of laughter in her voice.

I smiled privately at that. "Well, I suppose that's one way of saying it, but I think it was more like 'out of his mind with panic' than 'concerned.' He — can you believe this? — he _carried _me to Dr. Paardenkooper's at a dead run, all the way across town."

I smiled, reflecting on that panicked and panicky moment, the look of terror on Pa's face, that only made my own worse and worse as we rushed to Dr. Paarenkooper's practice, only to find out that it was just my first period.

No big deal, just something that happens to every girl. No big deal, except for clueless me and Pa, running across town in a complete panic.

"When we arrived at Dr. Paardenkooper's office, I didn't know if Pa was gonna have a heart attack from all that runnin' or if his arms were gonna fall off. He was all red-faced and panting like a factory smoke stack chimney, I tell you what!"

I smirked, but then recalled the unpleasant afterward.

"I don't know what was worse," I said, "Pa's initial panic, or Dr. Paardenkooper ... you know ... _examining_ me ... _down there!_ I mean ..."

I recalled him having me sit up on the table, and having me open my legs, and him bending down in front of me and looking at me, right there, and then touching me there, gently, but he was touching me, and opening me up, and looking, and ...

... I was so embarrassed I thought I would die.

Didn't help any that Pa absolutely refused to be with me, that he just stayed in the waiting room and paced around uselessly like ... well, like Pa.

"... Or," I continued, "when Dr. Paardenkooper called Pa back after he assured him I was decent again, and that, no, I wasn't dying, that this was normal, and that we now had to count days, and what we had to do to prepare this _thing_ that would be happening to me every month..."

Rosalie was looking at me. "Did he help you?"

I laughed in surprise. "Huh? _Pa?"_ Just the thought of Pa trying to help me there was hilarious. "Nah, he brought me by Mrs. Kuntz's, and, of course her daughter, _Kristen, _was there, with her _friends,_ and Kristen was like, nice, you know? And she said, 'Hello, Bella,' all polite-like, like it was a privilege for me that she even knew what the name of just the sheriff's daughter was, or even cared, and you could tell she was really relieved when Mrs. Kuntz took me out. And she and her friends were like whispering to each other as we left to the Main Street Market, you know? on Main Street?"

I looked to her to see if my directions were helpful ... she seemed interested, but not where Main Street Market was. And, on reflection, it was kind of obvious where Main Street Market would be. But, in my defense, Main Street was a much shorter street than Speelmon, so you _could possibly_ miss it, if you weren't looking hard ... in our tiny little nothing town.

I sighed. Here I was, a small town girl trying to give directions to this cosmopolitan lady of high society Back East who could care less about where our grocery store was.

So I continued.

"... and she's the one who took me 'nd Pa there and showed me where to put the coins in the slot of the box up front, right up by the entrance, for the ... well, pads, and where to get them from, so I wouldn't have to speak to the clerk and be embarrassed out of my mind with having _that kind_ of conversation in the public marketplace, you know? And what did Pa do? He, like, _ran_ to the back of the store to look at manly stuff like bacon or something like that or anything that didn't have anything to do with girlie problems, you know? Let us girls handle that."

I shrugged, somehow becoming dispirited by my own recollection.

"Hm," was all that Rosalie said for a while.

We were walking by the tree that she felled. I noticed it this time, even so deep into my own thoughts. Rosalie tugged on my elbow, pulling me over toward the tree. She dusted the snow that had been blown up onto my seat, and then, in a lady-like gesture, she took out a hanky, and laid in on my seat, patting on it, indicating for me to sit there.

I did. She sat on the trunk.

I looked at her quizzically. "You're not gonna sit on a hanky, too?"

"I just brought one." She explained, shrugging.

I tilted my head to my side. "Why don't you sit here?"

I started to stand up. Or I tried to.

Strong, irresistible hands pushed me back down onto my seat, ... onto her hanky.

She was standing right above, towering above me.

"A lady sits in a dignified manner." She glared at me, and then returned to her own, rough, uncovered seat.

"That's what I'm saying, Rosalie, ... Look: I ride in the saddle, all day, every day; I get my hands dirty, and my butt can handle sitting on a tree stump, because I've sat on worse, tons of times." I blushed slightly at saying the word 'butt' so casually, just like that, just like a girl who said 'butt' all the time and thought nothing of it. Growing up with most of my time spent in the Carter County courthouse with Sheriff Pa and all his manly deputies kind of rubbed off on me, I guess. Me? A lady? Yeah, right. So I pushed my point: "_You're _the lady, so _you_ should sit here."

Rosalie didn't move. She looked at me crossly. "And that's what you're not getting, Li-... my _little_ one," — _nice, smooth, recovery there, _I thought sarcastically, catching her slip — "is that _you_ are a lady, too. So you don't _fight_ but _accept_ the condescension of your betters with quiet grace and dignity and sit on covering offered to you."

I thought about that for a second.

"It's an insult to turn down the proffered token," she added curtly.

I sighed. It was just so obvious who the lady was here, but if I pushed it, I'd be insulting her.

And I just couldn't bring myself to do that. I may not be a lady, but I also wasn't one to insult one, either.

Especially if that lady were Rosalie.

Which it is.

Her. I mean.

I sighed again. Why can't I get over her? When it's _so_ obvious she's _so_ not interested in me, at all.

Not that way, anyway.

"But you're a lady, too, Rosalie," I complained faintly, not letting it go.

"Yes," she said, and her face said: _'obviously.'_

"But," I continued into that severe face, "I don't have a hanky to offer for you to sit on. I don't carry one, you know?"

Rosalie tilted her own head, and waited for me to _just get it._

I didn't, so she told me what I should have thought of: "Maybe, then, you should start carrying one, so you are always prepared for such occasions, or for any occasion that requires one."

I reflected on that, and, in thinking of me, taking a dainty little hanky out of what? my jeans, or was she going to start making me wear dresses? — _Ha! _I snorted to myself, thinking: _that'd be the day! _— and unfurling it, with the flair that she did, and pat it, like she did, and then saying, 'Here ya go, Rosalie, sit yer tush right there!' all gentle-woman-ly like, all highfalutin like that.

Just the image of me doing that had this big smile plaster itself across my face that just wouldn't go away, no matter how hard I tried to make it.

So I just sat there, on her ... _'proffered' ..._ hanky with the big-ole smile on my face.

Rosalie smiled back at me, quizzically.

"So," she became businesslike, "to summarize your experience of passing into womanhood: it was marked by you being embarrassed in your community and your peers ostracizing you, right? Just something that you wanted to go away and disappear so not to draw attention to yourself nor discomfit your father, correct?"

"Huh?" I said, taken aback, "I didn't say _that."_

Rosalie raised an eyebrow. "Oh, and how does my summary differ from your memory?"

I blushed. "Well, ..." I began defensively...

But then I didn't know how to complete my defense. I didn't know how to say that wasn't it at all, when, actually, when I thought about it, that's _exactly_ what it was to me.

I hate it when Rosalie is right, ... particularly when her being right shows me being an idiot. Which is all the time.

She waited, but when she saw nothing (intelligent ... ever) was going to come out of my mouth, she continued as if I hadn't raised an objection at all: "So that's what you've carried with you, how you regard yourself, your body, as something embarrassing and ostracized. You were a child, and everything was fine, but when you became a woman, it was the cause for panic, and you felt ... dare I suggest ... _dirty."_

I looked away and shrugged.

Now I know why I was dispirited from my recollection.

_Thanks, Rosalie, for summarizing that so succinctly. _I thought bitterly.

"It's not that an uncommon experience," she continued gently, "for women in your situation. They feel these things about themselves. It's pervasive that women view themselves, their body, their sexuality as something taboo, something dirty, and feel isolated and rejected for simply being a woman."

I blushed at the word 'sexuality,' because we out here didn't just come out and say things like that word, like how people like her just felt like blurting out like a waitress asking what you wanted to order, or something.

But then, she said 'in your situation.'

"'In my situation'?" I asked, daring to look at her.

"Yes," she answered simply. "In your situation: women with no friends and a poor self-image."

I winced. How could she be any more blunt?

"_Jeez_, Rosalie, don't hold back on my account!" I whispered, trying to sound sarcastic, trying not to sound hurt.

A cold hand lifted my chin, forcing me to look at her. She pierced me with her gaze.

"I don't hold back." She said calmly. "The reason why I don't hold back is _for_ your sake."

"Thanks," I said, tearing my face away from her hand, watching my feet kick the snow.

"You're still not getting it," she said softly, but so relentlessly. "How is what I am saying inaccurate?"

A tear welled up in my eye and spilled over. "It's not," I could barely hear myself whisper.

"And that's the irony of this, ... of you. This is all you see for yourself, yet you refuse to confront yourself and your life squarely. You just ... beat yourself down continuously, thinking of yourself in this way, dirty, ugly, friendless, and you'd rather live comfortably in your misery instead of confronting the choice you make to keep your head hung just as it is ... a girl perpetually ready for her justly deserved hangman's noose, rather than lift her head out of her own self-created misery and look about her, and see what's right in front of her: snow, trees, sky, beauty all around her that she could participate in, instead of avoid by digging that well of self-pity more and more deeply every day she wakes up and looks, or _refuses to look,_ into that mirror because all she sees is just 'plain, old, ugly' her."

A sob forced its way from my throat and more tears joined the first. It was so hard to breathe with nowhere to turn away from her accusations.

She waited for me to catch my breath. Patiently. Relentlessly.

"Rosalie," I pleaded eventually, "all I did was ask a question. What does this have to do anything?"

"Look at me," she commanded.

I sighed and lifted my eyes to her, looking through the blurring of the tears at calm, patient Rosalie, always right, always hard, so cold, so cruel.

Why did I so ... okay: _need_ ... her so to care about me, when all she did was belittle me?

"This," she waved about her, "has _everything_ to do with how you regard yourself, and that has everything to do with how you treat yourself."

"And that has what to do with my question about 'not involuntary discharge'?" I asked, just so lost.

Rosalie smiled sadly, "Sweetie," she said kindly, "we're not even half way there yet. Remember I said that I don't know who I'm talking to or what you know? We have to clear that air so I can answer your question so you can understand, okay?"

"Not even halfway there?" I gulped. But my thoughts were in turmoil over one word: _'sweetie.'_

What did she mean by that?

"Well," she said easily, "the hard part is ... mostly over... I hope."

Isn't she just so wonderfully _reassuring?_ It must be her sublime bedside manner, the way she so callously bosses me around all the time that helps here.

I rolled my eyes at my own sarcastic thoughts.

Rosalie's eyes were merry, acknowledging my internal barb.

Well, at least she had a sense of humor about being a meanie. So there was that.

I stuck my tongue out at her.

She smirked, and mirrored my gesture.

"Huh?" I exclaimed. "Rosalie! That's so ... _unladylike!"_

I was a little bit pleased that she allowed our mood to lighten. That she could be hard, but that she could relent, even for just a moment.

I just wished I remembered, in my playfulness, that I was playing a game with Rosalie _Lillian_ Hale, and I had deluded myself into thinking that she was kind to me, and she took care of me, ...

... and she did ...

... but she was, ... _is_ ... still a vampire, and still, every day, I had to balance that sometimes, something in her just ... _snaps ..._ and she goes from kind and caring to ... the most dangerous monster in the world, and then I find myself on the knife's edge, knowing that as I gasp in each desperate breath, it just might be my last one if I made a mistake, or if she just gave into her basest nature.

I wish, playfully teasing her now, that I remembered that.

But I didn't.

I thought, as we had begun walking back, that I could somehow create an advantage and then press it, pushing her, somehow, ... you know? ... making her realize that I could give as good as she could, that I could one-up her, somehow.

I just wish I could've remembered that she is a goddess, and stupid, silly, playful, ... _mortal_ me ...? If I _did_ succeed in showing her up?

I would be the one to pay for it.

With my life.

With my soul.

And, I couldn't even imagine the possibility now: but with even worse than that.

And the funny thing is, I didn't have to imagine it. It was just about to happen.

Just like that.

And the funny thing is, she wasn't even going to be just getting started, when she did lash out, from play to ... to ...

Funny how funny isn't funny, but it is sad, and, oh, God, it is terrible.

So, so terrible.

I thought, earlier, losing my argument with her, that I had regained a measure of myself, even if it were a _small_ measure of myself.

And I had to fight so, so desperately hard to regain that confidence in myself.

And I didn't know, ... I didn't think, ... that just with her slightest touch, just with one look from her she couldn't just take that bit of self-confidence away from me, but ...

... that she could shatter it.

I wonder if she even noticed as she would do that to me.

Nothing me. A nothing compared to her: everything that I could never be.

I wonder if she would even care, if she did notice.

* * *

**A/N:** I am changing this story's rating from 'T' to 'M' ... the following chapters are short, but disturbing. Rosalie doesn't lose control ... but how is a mere mortal to know the difference between a vampire showing just a hint, a controlled hint, of the darkness that is her, and a vampire giving herself over to that darkness?

Would you know the difference, alone in the woods with her, ... facing her, as she draws you into herself?

Warning. Unpleasantness ahead ... and it doesn't get better until after they make it back in from the woods.

If both of them make it back, that is.

I am sorry

An analysis of this chapter is published on my blog at twilight-dad-dot-blogspot-dot-com /2013 /01 /msr-ch-57-confidence-in-spontaneity .html but please read my critique of analyses first at twilight-dad-dot-blogspot-dot-com /2012 /12 /on-criticism-and-analyses .html


	58. Baseball: First Base

**Chapter Summary:** I _do not_ remember when I went to the field with Pa seeing baseball played this way. Unfortunately, I don't think Rosalie cares. Her game, her rules. Oh: her game is _me. _I just figured that out, ... much too late.

* * *

Rosalie smirked at my comment on her 'unladylike' tongue, and shrugged.

"You be careful," I continued warningly, "I just might want to bite that naughty tongue of yours, you keep showing it off like that!"

She raised her eyebrows. "I could say I have the same designs on your tongue, and offer you the same warning."

I blushed hard, suddenly, and tried to say something intelligent, but all that came out was, "Meep?"

She smiled easily, and shrugged again.

_"Quid pro quo," _she whispered.

I think I recall Rosalie saying those words meant something like 'what goes around, comes around,' but ...

"You want to bite my tongue?" I asked shyly, not daring to look at her.

She didn't answer. I sneaked a peak at her to see if I had crossed the line and offended her.

I didn't have to look far. She had silently slid right up next to me, and we were now face-to-face.

"Oh, just_ bite_ your tongue?" her voice had gone low and sultry, ... and predatory. I scooched away from her a bit, but she slid even closer to me.

I felt a bit panicky. She was intentionally in my space, and instead of allowing me regain it, she was closing even that gap, closing even more space between us.

"I don't want to do just that, oh, no!" she purred, and slid even closer to me.

I breathed her in between my gasps, and I felt the heat rise of my cheeks.

She noticed, of course. She raised her hand up to my face, and I tried to back away even further, but I backed right up against the cross, and it stopped my retreat.

Ironic, isn't it? The cross was supposed to ward off vampires, but instead, _this_ one, the one she dug out of this self-same tree she felled then embedded into the trunk as easy as you please, now trapped me in said vampire's snare.

I really didn't appreciate the irony all that much now. All I felt was panic, and I flinched away from her touch, afraid of what it might mean.

My flinch didn't deter her at all. The back of her hand touched my cheek, brushing across it so that her hand was now comfortably, but firmly, nestled behind my neck. And where my cheeks were burning before ...? Her touch felt like a hot brand, searing me there.

I was captured. A cross blocking my retreat, and her — only her — in front of me.

"No," she continued, "I would take your head in my hands, just like this," she whispered as she brought her other hand up, placing it behind my head.

I didn't know where to look.

"...And I would tilt your head back, just like this, ..." she started to pull me into her.

"Rosalie, please! Stop!" I gasped, terrified.

She didn't stop. Her smile went from predatory to wicked and possessive.

"...And I would bring your lips to my lips ..." she breathed, hungrily, and she pulled my face less than an inch from hers.

I panted, a tiny little sparrow transfixed in the cobra's gaze.

"...And, baby, I would kiss you... I would press my lips against yours, and I would kiss you, and kiss you, each kiss lasting forever and a day, each kiss burning into your very _being, _and then..."

Her smile was radiant, no ... it was _triumphant_.

"...I would part your lips, and then ... do you know what I would do?"

I couldn't even swallow. I couldn't even breathe any more. I couldn't tear my eyes away from hers as I shook my head _no._

"Oh, baby," she cooed, "I would let my tongue slip into your sweet, little mouth, and ..."

Here her voice dropped down into an almost worshipful silence: "... and I would _taste_ you."

I squirmed, trying to back away from the terror that was her, rooting me to the spot. But she would even let me squirm! Her right hand dropped from my neck down to the small of my back, and she pulled, she almost _yanked_ me into her. There was no space between our bodies, and just a fraction of an inch between her lips and mine.

"...And, baby, I would kiss you so long, and so hard, yet so gently, and sweetly, and so deeply, that you would forget to _breathe!"_

She almost snarled this last utterance, a predator staking claim of me — her prey — marking me as _hers._

"Rosalie, you're scaring me!" I whimpered, too scared to know even what I was scared of.

She ignored my squeak as if it was too little for her to hear. Too little: like me.

"...And you would faint, dead away, and you would be _mine,"_ she purred quietly, "utterly in my power, and I could do whatever I wanted to you, and I could keep kissing you and kissing you and kissing you, _tasting_ your sweetness, and you could do _nothing_ about it. Do you understand me?"

"Yes!" I squeaked, terrified, defeated, humbled.

"You could do _nothing!"_ she snarled, more forcefully, not satisfied with just my submission. No, she wanted even more than all I could give. "You would be _mine! _Just from my kiss. I would make you mine, yes?" she demanded.

"Rosalie," I whimpered.

_"Yes?"_ she roared, locking me more tightly into her embrace, glaring down at me, balefully, a goddess demanding servitude from an ant.

_"Yes!"_ I cried, submitting completely.

She stared at me a moment, totally dominating my being, and then, seeming satisfied ... she eased back, releasing me from her constraining embrace.

I was backed up against the cross, almost as big as me, — and much more solid than me, anyway — and I was panting, gasping for air, scared out of my mind, regarding Rosalie, the predator, the terror, the demoness, the vampire, as she shrunk back down from God-sized, filling my entire universe, into herself and look away from me, breaking the spell that had transfixed me in her gaze.

"...Just from my kiss alone," she whispered quietly ... almost despondently.

And she was lost in herself for a moment, as I tried, desperately, to recover, and tried to understand what was going on. I mean: what did this sudden transformation of hers from a ladylike conversation to a demoness terrorizing me and capturing me in her embrace and gaze ... what did all this mean?

But, then, just as suddenly as she had turned pensive, she looked up from her self-reflection, and regarded me critically.

"...And that's just first base, baby," she said, and it felt to me that she was like ... _sad_ for me, somehow.

I gulped. "First base?"

She looked away, waving in irritation. "Yes," she barked, "first base. Baseball, you know?"

She flashed a look at me for my comprehension.

I wondered why she even bothered, when she knows all she's every going to see is my confused look as I try to keep up with the twists of her conversation and the dangerous swings of her moods that in one moment has her smiling encouragingly at me, and the next moment, her leaning in to _take_ me and make me _hers._

"Baseball?" I repeated stupidly, still drunk from her proximity, still shaken from her possession of my body and my mind.

And I thought her sucking out my soul was the most terrifying thing she could do to me.

"Yes," she repeated, annoyed and displeased. "Baseball. Men... boys... they make sport of us. They make it a game, ... they make _us_ their game." Then she spat out: "And _we_ are _played _by them."

"First base," she explained, "are the lips. Kissing a girl is getting to first base with her, optionally with the tongue taking possession of her mouth, if possible and the advantage pressed and seized upon, and _wouldn't it be o-so-exquisite if it were! _And then, afterward, they talk so casually about us — their conquests — over the water cooler at work or in the locker room at school, swapping their manly stories of their sexual prowess, cheapening us and our virtues as commodities to be used and abused, or 'benefits' to be consumed ... for, obviously," her explanation turned dark and hateful, "despoiling a girl is manly and ... _fun."_

The way she said _'fun'_ ... it was anything but funny.

She looked over at me, looking at her in terror pushing back against the unyielding cross, and smiled sadly.

"And so the game is played."

Then her smile hardened, and twisted cruelly. She stood, towering over me.

"Get up," she barked. "Time to make a play for second base."

I looked up at her fearfully, and even as I was shaking my head _no _— 'first base' was already way too much for me, and I just wanted this cruel game to end — I squeaked out a weak "Second base?"

"Oh, yes," she purred, grabbing my coat by the lapels, and lifting from the tree as easily as my legs _didn't _lift me. And she didn't let me go, but held me eye-to-eye, forcing me to look right into the eyes of a cobra as my toes barely brushed the ground.

"You'll like this part of the game," she cooed alluringly. "First base was to capture your lips, but second base? Second base is the play for your breasts."

And her smile widened, and in the cold, cruel sunlight, it flashed pure white. I didn't know lightning could be hungry, until I saw Rosalie's smile.

I waited for myself to faint. I couldn't feel anything anywhere, not my breath, not my heartbeat, not my hands or feet, everything had gone numb, leaving only terror


	59. Baseball: Second Base

**Chapter Summary:** I could say 'I don't even know why I'm doing this,' but I know myself too well. If I destroy her, then she will hate me for the monster I am. I always have to be right. I always push it. I always go too far. And she always has forgiven me ... until now, that is.

* * *

"How shall we proceed?" she asked, staring into my eyes that didn't roll up into my head and release me from this nightmare.

"If I were a boy," she said factually, "there would be no subtlety about it, I would just make a grab under your shirt and treat you like you were some unruly livestock that needed to be broken, grabbing, mauling, twisting and pinching, until I shoved you onto the dirt, or your fell there, — doesn't matter, either way, you're there on the ground after a good hard feel-up feeling manhandled exactly as if you were a piece of meat at a butcher shop, and I'm here standing over you, just so aroused, so _taut,_ at your utter and complete debasement — and then that's when I would drop heavily on top of you and mount you properly, riding you _hard,_ fucking the _shit_ out of you until I was good and properly done with you, until I was entirely spent..."

We were at eye-level, but it felt like she was glaring _down_ at me.

"... which would be a long, long time after you were," she clarified ominously: "... a _long_ time after."

And then she looked away and whispered, "I know."

I felt weaker than a leaf, shaken in a stiff fall gust of wind, no longer attached to the life-giving branch, not rooted, nothing to hold onto, no bearing at all.

"But I'm not a boy," she said, but her statement, delivered so dispassionately, gave me no hint of hope, only a dread of what was coming, and what can be worse that be treated like a piece of meat? I feared I would be finding out

I didn't fear long.

"So," she continued quietly, "I can be soft, and slow, and ... gentle, ..."

And just as softly added, "... but you will never, ever forget, not for one second, the power, the total, complete and _absolute_ power, I hold over you, even with the softest of strokes and the sweetest of caresses, and you will feel the need I call up from your inmost being that will have you _begging_ for me to release you from this unrelenting torrent of desire. And, baby, I can bring you to those heights, but then leave you there, and not give you that sweet release until _I decide_ when you've earned it with your begging, and pleading, and whining in desperation that's pure music to my ears. You will never know a torture more exquisite than my softest touch, lifting you higher and higher up toward pure white-hot pleasure but not letting you sink down into that sea of satisfaction and contentment."

"And when I do let you go from those heights ...?"

Again, her terrifying smile.

"... you will come down so hard, you won't know if you've actually just died ..."

And her smile twisted even more cruelly.

"... and you won't care. You won't even _feel_ the release of the unrelenting torment, because your senses will be so full of me and what I have been so sweetly doing for hours and hours. You won't even know when the torment stopped, my soft, sweet, gentle hands on your breasts, my lips pressed to your lips, then to your cheek, then neck, then collarbone then ... will you let me drift lower?" she asked softly.

"Yes, you will," she answered herself. "You will _beg_ me to kiss you all over, your hands will be pushing my head down and pressing me into you as you lift your whole body up to meet mine, seeking the release of my soft, sweet, teasing lips, that only, paradoxically, my lips can release you from."

"You won't be able to stop yourself. You won't even recognize that it's your own voice begging me to take you."

Her lips, the only thing I could see of her face besides her cobra-sharp black adder eyes, ... her thin, bloodless lips both twitched upward.

"You'll feel my lips trace a soft trail down to your breast, and you'll feel my nose tickle your nipple as I breathe you in, as my breath caresses you, just as my nose does, just as my lips reach out to kiss, and to nibble, and to tease, until your nipples are so rock-hard they actually _hurt_ from want."

She paused and looked down, and I could feel her gaze penetrate my coat.

"Just as they are now, baby."

I felt the heat of my blush suffuse me in my shame.

"And you will _pull_ my head into you with _all your might_, trying to get my lips to kiss and to suck on your nipple, burning with desire, and ... baby," she purred, "I will. I will kiss you there, and so much more than that, but that's just the beginning, because imagine how much burning desire my lips can give you ask a softly suckle at your breast, giving you exactly what you want, but putting more and more burn into you, wanting more and more, and only receiving just enough to keep you desperately on the edge?"

Then she pulled me into her, and my chin rested on her shoulder, and I felt her nose nuzzle against my ear, and she whispered so softly, not into my ear, but right beside it, so that I had to strain to hear her words.

"Now imagine what my tongue will do to you."

Rosalie had pulled her fists together, bunching my coat tightly in between them so that I couldn't move to save my life, in fact I could barely sip in a breath of air.

But her words were ... _affecting _me. I felt funny in my tummy. Tight. It felt like I was going to be sick or it felt like I needed to pee, or both. I squirmed and whimpered, and my legs were like quivering. I had so much energy in them that I was trembling violently, and they were making a little movement like I was almost trying to run ... to run away ... to run somewhere, _anywhere _to get some space from here, to clear my head so I could breathe and _think _again.

Her words were terrifying and intoxicating, and I was drunk with the fear of them.

"O, my _tongue,"_ Rosalie gloated. "It is o-so-teasing, o-so-flexible, so demanding, so frisky, so ... _playful, ... _so agonizingly, luxuriatingly, ... _slow. _It may even make you forget that my lips are nibbling, that my mouth is suckling, my tongue is that precise, that demanding, that frustrating, that pleasing, that it will tantalize you with pleasures you could've never have _dreamt_ until you are there, transfixed, speared, seared, and, ultimately, when I do give you that sweet release, so _satiated_ that you won't be able to catch your breath ... you won't even be able to _move_ for several minutes? hours? days? You actually wouldn't know. And I'll have to carry you to the bed, just so you can recover well enough simply to be able to rise up back enough from your ecstasy that you'll drop away into a deep, satisfied sleep, a sleep of no dreams, a sleep unto death itself."

"And you'll drop off _gratefully._ You won't even know if you'll ever wake up again. You won't even _care."_

I felt like a rag doll. I felt the edges of my eyesight dim as I tried to take little, tiny sips of air into my lungs, but I couldn't even do that, because I was hyperventilating from the things her words were doing to my mind and my body.

I had never felt these things before I had been captured in her arms, before I had been transfixed by her eyes, and now her words were making it all so much more palpable, so much more terrifying, so much more ...

I was so confused, my cheeks burning holes in my scarf, I'm sure, and my chest squeezed so tightly, bound by my coat, but as tight as that was, it didn't feel anything like my tummy did. It felt like ...

It felt like a stone, like a tight, tight stone somehow squeezing me into it. I felt like I was collapsing into my belly.

Rosalie slowly extended her hands away from her.

That is, extended me away from her, holding me at arms length, examining me. Watching. Waiting.

"So," she said so easily, so casually. "You've heard rough like a boy, or ... gentle ... like ..._me."_

At each word, she slowed down, further, and even further, giving each word more and more weight until the final word: _'me' ..._ that is: _her._

"So," she said expectantly, "How shall we proceed? Rough or gentle?"

Then she looked at me patiently, that is with the patience that Death wait for the maiden, eternally patient, and that patience filled with menace.

"Which way do you choose?" she demanded.

And she waited for my response.

* * *

**A/N: **今日は ('Konniti wa') from Narita International Airport. Perhaps I'll write another chapter as I connect further into Asia. Can't promise anything. Other than this will continue to get worse ... that is, until it gets worser. So. Which one will our girl choose, rough, and get it over with quickly? Or ... 'gentle'?


	60. Baseball: a Pickle

**Chapter Summary:** "I withdraw the question!" I declared so bravely to her. That was supposed to work. That always works in the talkies. How come is doesn't work here?

* * *

I found I couldn't speak; my voice had deserted me, with my courage.

... which I had never had, anyway.

So as I tried to say something, anything, I violently shook my head _no_ as my eyes pleaded my case.

Then I finally managed to gasp out a "No, Rosalie, please!"

Rosalie's countenance grew darker and darker as she scowled at me.

_"That,"_ she spat out, "was not the question. The question was: 'Rough or gentle?' The answer you gave me just now doesn't tell me which way to proceed."

"Rosalie," I begged, "I don't want to proceed. I don't like this game, and I don't want to play it any more."

She snorted her contempt. "It is not your game, and you are not playing it. _You_ are the game, and you are being _playéd."_

The way she accented the second half of the word 'played,' made it a two-syllable word, just for her.

Just for Rosalie.

"You asked the question," she said. "You knew the importance of it, even as you pushed for it, time, and again. You knew you had to put your life on the line for everything you do, for everything you are. Do you think I was joking when I said that?"

Before I could answer she snarled her own answer. "Well, I'm _not_."

"You don't write checks with your mouth that can't cash with your ass," she continued hotly. "Everybody else has been doing that for far to long in this country, and look where it got us: a full-blown financial crisis, and worse, a people dispirited and dispossessed. You wanted to know. You needed to know. You _have to know._ Time to pay that check, little girl. Time to play."

My eyes sought anywhere to rest other than her. A way out. An escape.

And although they darted around, they always failed. They always returned to her.

"Then," I gasped desperately, "I withdraw the question. I don't want to know anymore, Rosalie. I don't care!"

This didn't help. It was supposed to stop her. It was supposed to work.

It didn't work.

Rosalie eyebrows clouded.

"You _cannot_ have already forgotten that I told you to finish what you start," she said coldly. "You back out of one thing, then you permit yourself to back out of anything. What's to separate you from the mass of humanity otherwise?"

"No, Rosalie," I shouted forcefully. "You're wrong. I told you that you're wrong. I _am_ just like everybody else. You made a mistake, okay, Rosalie?" — and I thought helplessly, _and your making a mistake now, _so I added a desperate: "So, just stop this, Rosalie. I don't know what the _hell_ you're doing, but I'm just a ... I'm just a ..."

I was starting to lose it, and I couldn't even wipe away the tears as they came, so tightly she held me.

"I'm just a girl, Rosalie, that's all. I'm just a girl. I just wanna go home. I just wanna ..." I sobbed. "I just want this to stop."

There was absolutely no sympathy from her. Her face just kept getting harder and harder.

"I was about to say 'two things,' but you, 'just a girl' just added another one to my list, and now I have to say 'three things.'" Her voice was filled with laughing surprise.

Her face showed no pleasure at all.

"So, three things, little just-a-girl," her lips curled contemptuously.

"Firstly," she hissed. "It's you. It's you. It's all for you, isn't it, little girl? Well, now it isn't. Not any more. You aren't living your sheltered, little secluded life any more. It's called 'growing up' and facing the fact that you are responsible for your actions, because they always affect others."

"You withdraw your question?" she continued. "So _what!_ _I, I, Rosalie Hale,_ said I will answer this question, and _I swear by my own self_ I will see this through."

I had an out.

"But you didn't say that, Rosalie. You didn't!"

She _didn't_ say that.

But she didn't care.

"I measured your resolve," she said. "That is why I committed to this course, girl. I may not have said the words out loud, but said them in a much more important place: in my heart."

_"I am," _she said in a voice that shook heaven and earth.

_"I _am true to myself, regardless of what others, of what you, say or do, or _don't do_ what they _say _they will."

"But ..." I stuttered.

_"Zzzit!"_ was the closest I can come to the ferocious sound Rosalie made to shut me the hell up, her face as severe as a whip.

"Secondly," she continued, "Okay, let's pretend. Let's pretend that you're right, and you're this nothing girl from this nowhere town, just like everybody else, and I was _wrong._"

She glowered at me for a full second, then said: "Let's pretend."

And then I felt the wind do two things. It left my lungs in a _whoosh_ and then it whistled past my head in ... well, _a whoosh._

And I saw Rosalie get smaller and smaller as everything blurred past me, and I realized that she flung me from her, like I was a little raggedy doll she no longer liked playing with.

It's a miracle I didn't smash into a tree as the forest whipped past me.

God's providence? Or a deliberate act of Rosalie?

I was beginning to wonder if they were one and the same thing.

I didn't slam into a tree, but my feet finally touched Earth, that is: my heels, digging into the snow, and I broke through the solid crust of snow, landing, hard, on my back.

What little air didn't escape my lungs before ...? Yeah. Gone. All gone.

But Rosalie wasn't.

I saw her.

As I was desperately trying to suck a thimbleful of air back into my lungs, I saw her coming toward me, walking, gracefully, without a care in the world, or thought of hurry. She was walking, but it seemed that all the trees in the forest where bending out of her way. It looked like they were trying to uproot themselves, so that they could run from her.

Because they were smart. Not like me.

She walked so casually, but in no time, she was right above me, God-height.

"Let's pretend all that is true ..." she hissed.

"Well, if that be the case, little girl, no different than anybody else, what's now to protect you from one very disappointed and angry vampire?"

She said it. She said the 'v'-word.

That's how I knew she was seriously mad.

That's how I knew I was now, seriously, in trouble.

"Get up," she snarled.

I looked up at her, terrified. I couldn't move, even if I wanted to. I just shook my head and mouthed a helpless _'no.'_

She looked down at me, a bug, contempt twisting her face into this hideous, powerful, terrifying, _beautiful_ creature, and contemplated me, as if she were deciding what to do with me. You know, like: how she would throw away this trash that's in her way.

She tilted her head to one side, and smirked.

"No matter," she said lightly, and then in one swift motion, she dropped heavily, on top of me, her knees shattering the snow around us, the force of her fall pushing it away a little, piling the snow around us like ...

Like, well, a bed.

She smiled, and with the back of her hand tenderly caressed the snow.

"After all," her gaze returned to me, "you're in the perfect position for me to do exactly what and anything that I want to do to you, and here we are, on this soft, warm, snowy bed ... for what more could we ask?"

My eyes followed her hand on the snow, and I saw, I _felt,_ the snow, to her, was so soft, and so ... _warm._ That she was a creature entirely void of humanity, entirely alien.

And I was just so ... _human ..._ so frail, so weak, so nothing. Something, that is _nothing,_ that she could lift up and hold in the air, that she could throw across the forest. She didn't care about me: she picked me up, measured me, and cast me aside.

There was was _nothing_ that could be between us, ever, because there was nothing at all alike. We weren't even two _girls_. She was God, and I was not.

And then I realized that there was actually, in fact, nothing between us because she was right on top of me, pinning me down into this snowy bed.

"So," she said, turning her attention to me again, "I will ask you again, and this time you will answer: rough? or gentle?"

I was stuck under her, her hips locking my hips down into the snow, but I couldn't fight the urge to run. And I couldn't fulfill it, either. I tried to find my voice: "No, Rosalie," I whispered, _"please!"_

"I said you will answer me, and you shall." She was losing patience, and her voice had an edge to it. "Or, if you refuse, then I will choose."

Then she paused, looking down at me coolly.

"... And you will not like that choice."

Finality rung in her words.

_"Please,"_ I begged, "please, be...be... g-gentle."

My voice was breaking, and I couldn't look away from her, my eyes fixed, then lost focus on the sky over her left shoulder, and I realized my clouded vision was from tears welling up out of my eyes.

"Please be gentle," I whispered helplessly.

Rosalie's face swam into my view. "That would've been my choice, too," she said wistfully, "if I had been given the choice."

"But I wasn't given that choice." Her voice was so distant, so remote.

"I would've," she continued quietly, "I would've even wanted Royce to be rough with me, and take me as a man takes a woman, as a husband takes possession of his wife, and feel his strength, and his power, and feel his seed fill me as we consummated our love for each other."

"That is," she said sadly, "if we were husband and wife, and if we did truly love each other."

She unbuttoned the top button of my coat, and I gasped in shock at her soft, delicate touch as she separated the collar from my neck while she unwrapped the scarf from my face.

I should have been fighting her, but my hands and arms where dead things at my sides. I felt one hand clench at the snow, but that was all I could do, that was all I could _think_ because thinking and hope had abandoned me, and all that was left were sensations of touch and sight and smell overwhelming me, and all the senses so overwhelmed were of her.

She continued to speak as she unbuttoned the second button of my coat, and eased the lapels apart.

"Do you know why," she said in soft tones, "so much effort has been put into covering a woman's breasts? Corsets, brassieres, these things are so difficult to remove, are they not? Reenforced with padding, stitching, whale bone, lacing, hooks, fasteners, and material that you can't tear, no matter how strong you are ..."

Then she glanced into my eyes, "... as a human, that is."

"And do you know why," she continued quietly, "that the coverings for the breasts being such a fortress that the panties are so ... not? The panties tear so easily, are bypassed and allow probing so easily, and with the quickest of tugs come right off. Do you know why this is so?"

I looked up at her, mutely, as she undid the third button on my coat, further revealing me, little, helpless me, underneath.

"It is because of this," she explained, watching me, watching my throat work, watching the tears spill out of my eyes. "Second base is all there is to this game of baseball that we are played by, really. For once the man can get his hand under your shirt, once he can, in his primitive, stupid, neanderthal mind figure out how to undo the laces or unfasten the hooks, ..."

She gave me a sad smile. "Once his eyes see your nipple, it's game over."

"When that happens, his brain in his head, that is: his head up top, stops operating, and the only thing that works now is the little monster between his legs, and his whole body, his arms, his legs, his fists, all work to complete the act that his instinctive urge impels him to. And then it's off with your panties, fair maiden, and goodbye to that title as well, for you will now be a maiden no more. He doesn't care if he has to ease your panties off gently or if he tears them off forcefully. He doesn't care if you say, 'No! No! No!' and 'But I don't want to! Not like this! Please not like this!' ..."

Her sad smile remained, but the pleading in her voice was wrenched from her chest, as I saw the pain rip its way across her face.

"... and no court of law will protect you then, and it will even side with him," she said. "For all he has to say is, 'Your honor, she showed me her breast,' and that would be that. After all," she said, "one cannot just tear off a corset. One cannot just punch a girl to the ground and unhook her brassiere without her knowing consent and full participation, can one, or, in my case, even five? No, she has to be fully consenting to disrobe that far. And that is why they make the covering up top so strong, and the one below so weak. Once the top is gone, there's no need for struggle any more over the bottom, and no point. A girl's nipple is a signal right to the man's brain, which then shuts down, and allows bestial instinct to override any thought of morality he may have had."

And as she said this, she undid the fourth button, over my belly button, and further eased my coat apart.

"And now," she said.

And she gently lifted my back, and began to ease my coat off my right shoulder.

I gasped, and felt her hands shift as she began to easy my coat off my left shoulder.

"Rosalie," I pleaded, "you don't have to do this!"

She smiled down at me, and her smile looked kind. "What does what one _has_ to do with what one _wants_ to do?"

"Rosalie, no! No, please stop!"

Her hands were behind my head, cradling me in the snow, and she leaned in toward me.

"Do you see the irony in this?" she asked, her face inches from mind.

"Y-yes," I gasped.

That gave her pause.

"Oh, really?" she asked disbelievingly, her voice tinged with a bitter irony. "What is the irony that you see here, little helpless pleading girl?"

"You-you're ..." I stuttered.

"Yes?" she asked, so superior.

"You're r-raping me," I said, and two more tears spilled out of my eyes.

Her face froze.

"You're raping me, just like R-royce raped you. A-and, and you couldn't do anything t-to stop him, j-just like I...I...I c-can't stop you, and, ... and ..."

I was looking up at her, crying freely now, unable to get the words out whole, but unable to stop.

"And ... and ... he h-hurt you, and y-you're taking, you're taking that out on me, b-because you can, and, ... and I can't stop you."

She hadn't moved. She hadn't breathed. And her superior smile? It just went away, replaced but an utterly blank, unreadable expression on her face.

Her cold, perfect, beautiful face.

"B-but I can't s-stop you, Rosalie, ... b-but I ... you ... you don't have to do this. You don't. You can s-stop if you ... if you ..."

I gasped a sob.

"If you want to ... or, or ..."

I breathed in hard and tried to say something, anything that would penetrate past this monster she had become.

"Or, ..." I couldn't think of anything, "or, ..."

I just kept saying that stupid word 'or' over and over again, knowing I had failed, because I was so stupid that I couldn't put words together to say what I wanted to say, and I didn't know what I wanted to say even if I could say them.

All I could do is hope that somehow I would reach though to her, and that she would stop being this thing that was attacking me and be herself again.

Her face was inches from mine, and she had me all pinned down and wrapped up in her. She could do anything she wanted to me right now, and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

It all depended on her. It. Me. All I could do is hope that she who was so intent on taking me, regardless of what I wanted, would show mercy.

Mercy from Rosalie?

I know: a hopeless hope on my part, but it was the only thing I had, so I held onto that with all my might.

I looked up at her, her unreadable, beautiful face, hoping, and watched as I saw her transform from this hard, unmovable being into something, I don't know what, that, maybe, remembered her humanity. I didn't dare to breathe as I looked up at her, but then I gasped in surprise as her face fell away from my vision, and I felt her land, hard, in the snow, next to me.

I heard the soft _thud_ as her body hit the snow, and I felt the ground shake, just a little bit, as it took her weight, her mass, as if it tried to catch it's own balance to accommodate her.

As if it were trying to get used to her. As if anything could.

I looked up at the clear, cold sky. All was calm. All was bright.

I waited for something to happen. It didn't. I waited for the next terror to inflict myself on me. It didn't.

I dared, as quietly as I could, to look over a Rosalie, surreptitiously drying my eyes on my shoulder.

Was she still there?

She was. She was lying on her back, right beside me, looking up into the sky.

I looked back up at the sky, trying to see what she saw. Trying to see as she did.

I saw the big sky. That's all I saw.

I looked back over at her.

After a moment Rosalie said quietly, "There's a storm coming."

I looked at her: her face, so impassive, so remote, looking up at the sky. Did she even know I existed?

I looked back up at the sky. I saw no storm, no hint of clouds. I felt no quickening of the air that would be a precursor to a snow.

I just laid there, breathing in, and breathing out. I had fought for my life, right here in the snow, fought for her not to hurt me, and she didn't, and I should be happy, or relieved, or furious at her, but I felt nothing of those things. I just felt drained.

And then, just lying here, next to Rosalie, nothing happening, moment after moment, just her and me looking up at the sky, ...

I felt ... peace.

Nothing was happening, but that was enough.

"Yes," I whispered back.

* * *

**A/N:** In baseball, a 'pickle' is when a base runner is caught running between two bases, where the basemen have the ball. As the baseball is thrown much faster than the base runner can run, he cannot run forward to the next base nor return to the safety of the previous one. Rosalie here is caught in a pickle between first base and second base, neither having kissed the girl (first base) nor moving onto her intended (?) target of second base: tagged out, in the pickle.


	61. Why?

**Chapter Summary: **Well, I said it. Kinda. God, I'm such a wimp.

* * *

Rosalie kept looking up at the sky, but after a while, I found I'd rather look at something else.

So I very quietly turned a little bit, and rested my head on my arm, ... and looked at her.

She looked so peaceful, just looking up at the sky, so different from before, when her face was twisted with anger, and irony, and hate, and other things that I couldn't really identify, but scared me, because I hadn't seen them in her before, and there she was just ... just so right in front of me, not giving me any space to breathe and not giving me any time to think.

Now, she was different. She was quiet, and if she were having thoughts, they didn't rip across her face as they did earlier. She was just lying back in snow, looking up at the sky.

I wondered what she was thinking to herself.

My arm was kinda facing toward her, so that meant my mittened hand wasn't all that far from her face. Just an observation: her face was there, my right hand was there. If I just moved it a couple of inches, I could have touched her cheek. Not that I wanted to, mind you, it was just that...

Well, it was just that her bangs kind of covered her eyes ... a little bit? And she didn't seem bothered by it, looking up through her hair to the sky — but ...

But she gets on these kicks, right? She gets all righteous, and she screams at me ... or she goes completely off her rocker, like quiet time yesterday, and like, well: just now. And when she does that she's, like, so sure of herself, but then I somehow say something that really takes the wind out of her sails, like yesterday when she was screaming at me about how she so loved saving my life, that she was having the time of her life and I said she couldn't because she was dead, so there, and ...

And she lost it. Just like now. Just like now, she looked so lost.

And, okay, I get it. She just attacked me, okay? And for, like, no reason at all, but I could tell she was on one of her crusades for whatever idiotic reason she got on these kicks. So, yes, I get that I was just totally violated by her two seconds or two minutes or twenty minutes ago. I get it.

But, it's like, all these grown up people in my life, like Pa, like her, they think they have to be all grown up around me, when they can't even tie their shoes without my help, and with Pa, it was like, I took over taking care the house, or else we would've lived on fried eggs for every meal for the rest of our lives. But with Rosalie...

I mean, she didn't have the fried eggs problem, and she could handle herself, or so she thought, just Pa thought. He could handle himself in a law enforcement situation, but that was about it. Rosalie could handle herself in a ...

Well, it's funny, she could handle herself, because she can't get hurt, at all, right? But you'd have to be really blind not to see that she's just this big ball of hurt, walking around, taking everything personally, spoiling for a fight, just so she could prove that she could match anything thrown at her, when all it was her just running around saying, 'See? See? I'm better than!' All the while knowing in her heart that she's never measure up to anyone that mattered: her parents, herself, Royce, the man who scarred her forever, Edward, the man who was supposed to be part of her new life but rejected her outright ...

Suddenly, I hated Edward for the callous bastard I now saw him as. Couldn't he have at least given her a chance? I mean, she's beautiful, but she's not shallow at all. I mean, Rosalie? A 'dumb blonde'? Not even _thinkable. _Besides all the blonde girls back in Ekalaka weren't dumb at all! They were smart and sophisticated and grown-up, and had boyfriends, unlike me: the 'dumb brunette.' And Rosalie, beside being this complex person, she's also really, really smart, — I mean, she can't, like, lose an argument, ever! — and when she sets her heart on somebody or something, there's no way she's ever going to give up on her ... I mean, not 'her' but whatever sets her mind on ... you know what I mean?

I mean, why would Edward just, like, go: _'Pffpht! Not my type!'_?

I mean, that kinda shows _him_ as shallow in my book, anyway, in case you were wondering.

_Jerk!_ I thought spitefully, as I thought of Edward and what damage he did to this poor girl who was just left on the streets to die after being raped, and then she's turned into this bloodthirsty creature without her consent, and then, instead of showing any sympathy at all Edward acts like a selfish little prig because why? Because his family says, 'Oh, here's a nice girl, maybe you could ...' do what? I don't know. Go to the talkies? Or, they're top drawer, right? So go to the opera or something those high society types did, all dressed up in their tuxedos and evening gowns under chandeliers with people laughing and dancing by champaign fountains...

But he was, like, flat out: _'No.'_

Talk about a slap to the face!

And then she ends up here. No champaign. No evening parties. Just plain, old, boring sky she's staring up into. And instead of talking with doctors and bankers and artists and who-all else she like talking with during soirées ... thrown for _her!_ ... she has stupid little me, who has read some stuff — I can hold my own, okay? And I proved that with Mr. Jerkward who was acting all nice to me probably because he could feel all superior to me, unlike with Rosalie, somebody who was at his level, but he couldn't handle that — but me? I don't even have a high school diploma, and it feels like all my smarts just run away from me whenever Rosalie's giving me the stare-down, and I can just see her frustration when she has to explain every little thing to me.

And I see that in her face, that ... she's lost _everything._

Just like Pa did, when Ma left, and with Pa, for me, it was practical, I took care of housework stuff and office admin stuff, so he could do his job, and we had, like, this: working partnership. Father, and daughter, working together to make it all work.

But with Rosalie, there's no practicality at all. There's nothing I can do that addresses anything she can't do.

Because she can do anything, just like that.

But the one thing she can't do ... is heal her heart.

_God! I'm so stupid!_ Why didn't I see it before? Her haughtiness and pride're just masks to cover her feeling that she doesn't, well, measure up at all.

So, _that's why_ I have these ... well, tender feelings for her! That's why my heart keeps going out to her!

Because she's heartbroken.

And that's one thing she can't fix with her smarts and her pride.

And instead of going around crying, saying 'woe is me!' and all that stuff, she just walks around, all pissed off, spoiling for a fight.

And probably, everybody up to now has been more than happy to just dismiss her as a pissed off ... well ...

Well, we don't think that word about people around here. We're raised better than people Back East, like, well, Rosalie who says things like 'sexuality' in conversations, and when she's pissed she says no-no words like the 'sh'-word, and the ... 'f'-word.

She probably, when she was back at her high school, would look right at a rival and call her a ... a, well, 'bitch,' right to the girl's face.

We don't talk like that out here. Neighbors _help_ each other here in the New West, where the Indian nations are a real threat still, even with the newly established reserved lands for them, and they're nothing to what God throws our way for weather, drought and flash-storms in Summer, and then how many people die every Winter?

I might not like Kristen or Susie, but I would never, ever, think of them as that 'b'-word.

Just as people Back East would have no problem thinking of Rosalie as a ... you know ... a 'bitch.'

A 'pissy bitch' who needed a good ... 'f'-word to settle her down.

That's what she told me, anyway.

I would never think that, though.

I couldn't. It's just not possible for me to think in that way. I'm not Rosalie, nor her high school friends, whom I'm sure she had lots of, not like me. 'Friendless,' she called me. 'No friends and poor self-image,' she said so factually when she described me, and right to my face, too. That hurt. A lot.

She was right.

She said the truth hurts. And it does.

I think that's the only way she sees the world. That it hurts. Maybe that's why she's so casual hurting me. Because, to her, that's just the way things are. But maybe that's why she's so caring when she's healing me, because she knows how bad it hurts?

Maybe.

I moved my hand a little bit, you know, to brush the hair out of her eyes.

Those eyes flashed over to look at me, and I froze.

Even in her stillness, she's just so terrifying.

She looked down at my mittened hand. She looked back into my eyes for a second. Then she returned to looking back up at the sky.

Her lips pursed, and she exhaled a _puff_ of air that blew the hair out of her face.

After a moment, she asked in a small voice: "Why are you looking at me like that?"

After a pause, I said carefully, "Like what?"

Her eyes returned to me sharply, and she rolled them with an exaggerated _'Oh, please!'_ look.

"After Royce raped me," she said so quietly, so dispassionately, "I didn't want to look at him like you're looking at me. I wanted many things regarding Royce, and I, eventually, satisfied every single one of those wants when we had our special time together."

She looked over at me, measuring me, measuring how her words were falling on me.

She looked back up at the sky and continued. "When I moved my hand to his face, it wasn't gently to brush the hair from his eyes, as you moved your hand to do."

Her lips turned down in a twisted, ironic grin.

"Those were not two things I wanted to do after Royce raped me."

I looked at her, looking so distant as she looked up into the sky.

"And you did everything you wanted to do to Royce, when ... you know ..." I said.

"Yes," she said.

"... but it wasn't enough."

Again, the hurting smile.

"... and you're still hurting so much from that, aren't you, Rosalie?" I said. "You're not happy, even though you did ... all that."

Rosalie kept looking at the sky, then she looked over at me out of the corner of her eye.

"Are you happy?" she asked.

I shook to my bones. "Rosalie, you just raped me, and you ask me if I'm happy?"

Her eyes flashed over to me, and I saw rage twist her face.

But then she looked back up at the sky, and her face became calm.

"Tactless of me, I know," she said dispassionately.

"You didn't even say you're sorry!" I accused, hurting.

"Will it help you if I say I'm sorry?" she asked, confusion coloring her voice.

_"Yes,"_ I answered, my eyes narrowing to slits.

In a flash, Rosalie turned in place, facing me full-on. I flinched hard, but then she grabbed my mittened hand, and I shuttered at her touch.

She held my hand in both of hers, for a moment, letting my heartbeat return to something like 'just-below-panic' levels, and said, looking me right in my eye: "I'm sorry."

She held my hand for another second, then let it go. She turned back toward looking up at the sky, and sighed.

"See?" she said sadly, "Saying 'I'm sorry' doesn't help."

I looked at her. Now I knew what she was doing. Now I knew what she always does: she was beating herself up.

I should've seen it before, if I weren't so busy beating my own self up so well.

"Why do you say that, Rosalie?"

She smirked. "You flinched away from me. You can't stand my touch. You're scared of me."

She smiled to herself. "And I so wanted ... this. For you to fear me for what I am: a monster. For you to hate me. And now you do. Yay. I win."

I wonder if she could cry, would she be crying now?

Actually, I didn't have to wonder that.

"Rosalie, I don't hate you."

She snorted a _"Yeah, right!" _disparagingly. "And I swore that if anybody did to you what Royce did to me that I would _so_ ..."

Her breathing became belabored. "But _I did that. And I..."_

_WHAM!_

I gasped, she started punching her own face into the ground, the ground shaking with the blows, each one a thunderclap as she berated herself.

_"can't..." _

_WHAM! _

_"destroy..." _

_WHAM! _

Then she shrieked: _"MYSELF!"_

_WHAM!_

_"Rosalie!" _I screamed. "Stop! Stop! Please, stop!"

She stopped. Just like that. She had hammered her own head into the frost-hardened ground, and you know how when you throw a stone into the water during the summer, and the water ripples away from the stone? The ground had rippled away from the epicenter that was Rosalie.

She looked over at me. "Why?"

"Because this is scaring me more, okay? You didn't want to scare me? This is scaring me more, okay? So just please stop it, okay?" I looked at her entreatingly with my eyes begging her to stop.

She looked at me for a moment, then turned away completely, and curled up into a ball.

I heard her whisper a resigned "Okay."

I reached my hand, tentatively, to touch her back ... but I didn't know how she'd react.

"Besides, you were hurting yourself, and I don't like that, Rosalie," I said angrily. "I don't like that at all."

"I can't hurt myself, that's the fucking point," Rosalie spat back petulantly. "If I could hurt myself I would've ... God, I would've ... oh, fuck, what's the point! What's the fucking point?"

It sounded like she was going to go on a tirade, but then she just gave up on everything, even her own self-mortification.

After a while a thoughtful voice asked from the tight ball that was Rosalie, "Besides, what's with you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I hurt you, but you don't want me to hurt for it?" she said, sounding puzzled at the imbalance of justice, I guess.

"No," I said ... then I thought about that. "No, but you're hurting a lot, anyway ... inside, right?"

The ball that was Rosalie tightened further.

My hand inched to her back, and raised up to her shoulder, resting there.

She didn't flinch. She didn't shrug me off.

But, inside, I was vibrating, in turmoil. I was reaching out, and touching her, to comfort her, but I was still scared that she could just whip around and ... and do what? Scenarios flew through my mind, all of her angry, and forceful, throwing me around, grabbing me, throwing me down, mounting me, staring down at me with her cruel, cruel smile as she pushed weak, little me any way she wanted.

She could do that in an instant, and these images flashed through my mind, but I pressed my hand more firmly on her shoulder blade, defying these things to come true, spiting them.

Rosalie may be 'Rosalie Hale.' But, I could fight against what I was afraid of, too, not with her pride or her determination or smarts, but with ...

With me. I could fight against what I was afraid of by being me.

"Rosalie," I said timidly. "Can you face me, please? I have a question."

She didn't turn. "Don't go there," was her response.

"What?" I asked, taken aback.

"'Rosalie, why did you do that?' you were about to ask. Don't. If you ask for justifications from a monster, then you'll get monstrous justifications. I didn't ask why Royce raped me; my vindication needed no justification from _him._ He did what he did to me. Then I did what I did to him. Getting reasons for ... this ..." — her hand snaked up and waved vaguely at the air — "... won't help you, it'll only hurt you more, because you'll either fight those reasons, or you'll blame yourself for them. Don't listen to a monster and its reasons, lest you become one."

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks for that lecture, Rosalie. That wasn't my question."

There was a thoughtful pause.

Disbelief: "That wasn't your question?"

"No, it wasn't," I said quietly.

Rosalie very carefully turned and faced me, her eyebrows creased, her eyes measuring me.

"What is your question?" she asked.

She was looking at me. She was listening to me.

I swallowed. I knew what I had to ask, but now, with Rosalie's very critical eyes on me, I didn't know _how_ to ask it any more. And it was all so clear to me ten seconds ago.

I was afraid, or, more correctly, I just knew that I couldn't ask it Rosalie-smart, that I'd mess it up somehow, now, with her regarding me like that.

I sighed. I can't ask it like her, so I'll just have to ask it like me.

"So, like, in the cabin this morning?" I said. "I was, like, so _angry!"_

I have to stop saying 'like.'

"And you were ... like..."

_Shit. _I said 'like' again. I sighed.

"You were, like, holding me? Okay? And then you taught me some signs, and you were so pleased."

I looked to her for confirmation, and her lips quirked into a smile.

"Then ... this happened now."

And I took my mittened hand lying palm up in the snow, and flipped it over.

"And you did that yesterday. You screamed and screamed and screamed at me, but then you bathed me and tucked me into bed."

I flipped my hand back over to palm up.

"And then we had quiet time, and you let me read the Jane Austen book, but then you, like, ... snapped."

I flipped my hand, putting my palm on the snow.

I looked to her. She waited.

"Rosalie ... _why?"_ I asked.

"Trying to classify me, are you, little one?" She asked kindly, but a hint of superiority entered her voice and her eyes.

"I'm _trying_ to _understand!"_ I shot back fiercely.

Rosalie grimaced. "So you can say to yourself, 'This is when she's nice, so I can do this.' and 'This is when she's on the warpath, I think I'll just pretend I'm still asleep until she leaves so I don't get hurt'?"

"No," I said, blushing, offended. "That's not it."

"Then what is 'it'?" she asked levelly.

I took in a gasp of air. We were playing her game. The game where she always wins. The game where she asks the questions that she has all the answers to.

"Rosalie, please," I begged. "It has to make sense. It has to make sense, because if it doesn't make sense then ..."

Shit. I'm crying. _And _I'm talking like somebody from Back East.

Not good.

"...then it doesn't make sense. It has to make sense, Rosalie."

I know I can't win the intellectual game against her. But maybe if I did what she said, and put my heart on the line, maybe that would work where what didn't work was me trying to answer her questions correctly and always being wrong and being corrected and upbraided by her.

She tilted her head a little to the side thoughtfully.

"Why does it have to make sense?" she asked.

And she asked that, not as a college professor, lecturing Bella-the-frosh, but she asked it as a child, wanting to know why it was important to me.

She was telling me I had to dig deeper.

So I did. I closed my eyes for a second. Then I put it all, right into the palm of her hand.

"It has to make sense, Rosalie," I said, "because if it doesn't make sense, this constant flipping will ..."

I gulped, then I breathed out: "I'll go insane."

There. She had me right now. I put it all, right there, and she could take that, take me, right to an asylum if she wanted to.

I risked everything.

Rosalie scowled, displeased.

The shock of her scowl was ...

"That's a tautology, not an answer," she said, distaste evident in her disappointed tone.

_Oh, God, no_. I risked everything. So now she could have me carted away, and she was saying _that that's not good enough?_

I didn't know what to do.

"That's a what?" I asked helplessly.

"It's a tautology for you to say, 'if nothing makes sense, I'll go insane.'" she stated coolly, frowning at me. "When nothing makes sense, you act on that nonsense and are diagnosed with dementia ... insanity. You answered my question of 'why must it make sense,' with 'because it won't make sense if it doesn't.'"

She regarded me. "Do you see the tautology?"

She didn't bother defining the word, but I got the meaning loud and clear. I nodded sadly, defeated, again, no matter what I tried.

"So," she said, "I'm asking 'why must it make sense?' Sweetheart, _why_ _must_ _it_ make sense?"

She looked at me.

It almost looked like she were pleading with me.

I didn't know for what.

And I didn't know how to answer her question anymore.

My spirits didn't even lift, and wonder, when she called me 'sweetheart,' ... I was that dejected.

I looked to her, helplessly.

She smiled sadly. "When you asked for it to make sense, you were holding out for something. You were hoping for something. You don't need things to make sense when you hold out no hope, you just go to school, or go to your job, or 'live your life' vacuously passing the time because there's nothing to do about it as there's no point. I know. But it has to make sense when you do have something, a beacon, a ray of hope. What is that hope for you?"

I looked away from her, and thought about what she said. And wondered why it had to make sense for me.

And then it hit me.

Hard.

And the tears started falling.

"What is it?" she asked quietly.

I smiled through my tears. "You're gonna laugh at me."

She smiled. "And that's why you're crying?"

"Yes!" I cried. And when I said 'I cried,' I actually cried that word right out of my guts.

"Tell me," she said kindly.

I closed my eyes, and let more tears hit my scarf and coat on the snow.

"Okay," I capitulated. "Whatever. Just try not to laugh, okay?"

I opened my eyes and looked at her.

"You know what I hope for, Rosalie?"

God, my chest was so tight it _hurt._

"Okay," I said, "I hope that, okay, tomorrow, when I wake up, and you're there, that you hold me when I'm crying, okay? That's what I hope for."

I couldn't see her anymore through my tears, just a blur of white upon white. Rosalie, on snow.

I felt her turn away, and look up to the sky.

"No," she said, "that's ridiculous."

I smiled, so hurt, biting my lips. "I asked you not to laugh at me, Rosalie."

"I'm not laughing," she said seriously.

"You said, ..." I said, "you said: 'that's ridiculous.' 'Ridicule,' Rosalie, is something that you're making fun of ... it's something that you're laughing at."

She turned back to face me. My tears had stopped, so now she was a white blur with two black smudges for her eyes.

Her hand reached out to touch my face. She moved it so slowly, and when it touched my cheek, I didn't flinch this time.

I didn't need to. I had found my reason. My hope.

She looked into my eyes. "I say that it's ridiculous, because there is no hope in me. I am not your hope. I am what shatters and destroys you. You see it now. You will see it later. Do not put your hope in what can only disappoint you ultimately."

"You know, Rosalie," I said, getting angry, "I've heard that line, but now I gotta call it out as ..."

I paused, thinking of what to say.

"'Bullshit,' is the word you're looking for?" Rosalie suggested helpfully, smiling.

"Uh," I responded. I don't think I would've come up with that word. "Anyway, you say you're like that, but okay, flip again, because at first you were like, 'ha-ha, I'm gonna kill ya!' and then you're all like, 'Oh, I have to make sure you get to heaven,' and everything. Where the ..." I paused again, looking for a 'where the...' Nothing came to mind, so I pressed on: "... _something_ ... does that come from, huh?"

Rosalie was actually smiling at me. "You are just too cute for words when you try to pretend that you're a feisty little tiger kitten, aren't you?"

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Yeah, not answering the question, I see. So, okay, Miss I'm-your-destruction-no-hope-whatever, you say that I can't have that hope, well, guess what, I do."

"So there," I added for good measure, glaring at her as I crossed my arms over my chest.

She was silent.

Then she turned and looked up at the sky again.

Wait.

What?

Was she ... losing?

"This cannot be," she said quietly. "You are simply ... this happens with patients and their nurses ... or, in Esme's case, with her doctor. With prisoners and their guards. You don't hold out your hope for me at all, it's simply that ..."

"Uh, no, Rosalie," I said quickly, interrupting her. "You're wrong. You said before it was me, right? Well, now, it's you."

She didn't look over at me.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Okay, doctors and nurses and guards and all that sounds like you're just trying anything now, okay?"

"Please explain," she said.

She always seemed to get so quiet when she was so serious.

"Okay, Rosalie. You're here. That's it."

She frowned.

"So if it were someone else, you would hope in them?" she asked.

"Who?" I challenged.

"Anyone else," she countered.

"Like _who?"_ I demanded.

"Well," she began reasonably, "if, well, if someone were to, say, bring you out here, and ..."

"Okay, okay, I get it!" I groused.

"So, you agree that ..."

_"NO!" _I shouted.

Rosalie did turn and look at me then.

"What?" she asked, nonplussed.

"Rosalie, okay, I get it, okay?" I fumed. "You're asking a ... what did you call it? Not a rhetorical question but a ...?"

I looked to her for help.

"Metaphysical question," she supplied.

"Yeah, that," I continued on my tear. "You're saying, 'oh, if somebody else brought you here,' but you're not saying who. And you know why? Because _NOBODY ELSE_ would do what you've done, okay? Like, okay, Edward? I don't think so. Would Edward have done _any_ of this?"

I glared at her.

She glared back.

"Right," I said, taking that as a 'no.'

"So," I said, "maybe another vampire, okay? Like go through all that trouble and I'd last exactly how many seconds with one of your friends from Atlanta or somewhere?"

"They aren't my friends," Rosalie said.

"Uh-huh," I said. "So, how about not a vampire, but some deranged psychopath that takes me out here, schools this little girl so he can play God and take me out into the forest and tear off all my clothes and do all those terrible things to me that you were just talking about before and ..."

"...that I did to you..." Rosalie looked at me, reprovingly.

I actually _hissed _at her. "Excuse me," I snarled, "are you a deranged psychopath?"

Rosalie looked back at the sky. "The evidence would suggest that ..."

_"ANSWER THE GODDAMN QUESTION!" _I shrieked.

Rosalie kept looking up at the sky.

I wonder if she saw the heavens.

I wonder if she and God were having a private conversation, that I wasn't invited to.

I wonder what they are talking about me?

"No," she said finally. "I am in control of my senses," then added regretfully: "I know what I'm doing."

"And do you think I can't tell the difference?" I demanded. "Do you think I would let a deranged psychopath kidnap me out here to this woods and that I would fall in..." _Oopsie. Shoot._ "... that I would put my hope in him, because he taught me some signs so he could shoot me in the stomach when the heat came and then he would take me out here and ... you know ... f-f-fu ... do that to me?"

"Do you think I'm that blind?" I demanded.

Rosalie was quiet.

"So, Rosalie, when I say you're my hope? I mean _you_ are my _hope!_ Okay?"

Rosalie kept looking up at the sky.

"Rosalie," I asked sadly, "why are you fighting this so hard?"

That got a reaction. Her lips twitched upward.

"Sweetie, your world is so, so tiny," she said quietly, bringing her fingers together, less than an inch apart. "Your world is a one-room cabin with one other being." Then she raised her hand and brought it to her chest.

"...and your experience in even just that world? and in the world you grew up in?"

She shrugged.

"There is a whole world out there that..."

Here she lifted her hand from her chest and spread it and her other hand, encompassing the universe.

"...that is so much better."

My lips twisted in a smile. "So, you want the best for me?" I asked.

All innocence.

"Yes," she said, glaring at me. Onto me.

Fine.

"Well, then, Rosalie, that's you, again. You win."

I glared back.

She stared back up at the sky and sighed.

"I am the _worst_ for you, don't you see?"

No, I didn't.

"Name _one person," _I nearly shouted, "that is better for me, Rosalie. _One person,_ I _dare you!"_

"I can't..." she began.

_"See?"_ Miss I'm-the-best-there-is-Hale's getting a dose of her own medicine.

"I can't," she continued, unabated, "because I can't name one person worse than me."

"Edward Platt." I fired. She was always going on about what an idiot he was and a drag to their family, although I didn't see that until now, seeing how he treated her.

"It's actually 'Edward Cullen,' _né _Edward Anthony Masen. Good little Jew-boy. Rich family, well-respected in Chicago's society." Rosalie parried so coolly. "Doesn't count: he isn't a _human _person."

"Royce King," I said. Fire two.

At that, Rosalie hissed.

Now, me hissing? That's one thing. _Rosalie_ hissing?

That takes it to a whole different, 'you just got yourself a death warrant,' level of hiss.

But then she was quiet.

"Well," she said finally, "maybe ... if it were you, ... and not me ... he would've ... been a good husband and ..."

"Okay, Rosalie, seriously, you have to shut up now," my voice was tight and clipped. "You killed this man, because he raped you and left you for dead, and you want him to do the same thing to me now?"

She turned in a flash facing me, and her eyes were burning with rage. "If he, or anyone, so much as _looked at you _in an ungentl..."

I waved her to silence.

"Rosalie," I said. "It's you."

She looked at me. "No."

"Fine," I said, and the tears started up again.

God damn these waterworks.

"You asked me," I gasped, "what my hope is."

I sobbed.

"You didn't ask me to make sense. You asked me what my hope is. And it's you, okay, Rosalie. You. Not anybody else. Because, okay? You're all I have, okay? You're all I have."

"So," she said reasonably, "if there were _anybody else ..."_

"Rosalie," the tears just wouldn't goddamn stop, "I can't win an argument with you, okay? _You_ are _all_ I've got, not anybody else. I _know_ this, okay?"

"What about yourself?" she asked.

"Rosalie," I said, "you go out that door..."

I waved in what I hoped to be the direction of the cabin.

She didn't laugh at me.

"... then I wouldn't last two seconds, and you know it."

"You're exaggerating," she said, exasperated. "You've already lasted much longer than that when I go out on my hunts nearly every day."

"But then you come back. So, then, would I last two days?" I demanded.

She shrugged, and said, "Maybe? ..." then added. "Probably."

"Uh-huh. There I am. Whee! I've made it two days. Go me."

I looked at her.

She looked back.

"Why aren't you holding me now, please?" I begged.

"I don't want to hurt you," she answered.

"You don't want to hurt me, and you want the best for me, and, ... and ..."

I lost it.

I was crying and crying, and I don't know if I begged a 'please.'

I don't know.

All I know is, ... I was in her arms, and she was holding me, and she said, "It's okay, baby. It's okay. I've got you. I've got you."

Just like I hoped for.

* * *

**A/N: **To my dear Lexi(guest). Happy birthday. I cannot respond to your review if you leave it anonymously, so please make an ffn account for your reviews, huh? Do you see my birthday gift in the story? Is it a happy birthday gift? Or does it make you mad? sad? wanting more?

"Holy Lamb.  
See the world we started is it so low again?  
Like the light that's lost upon the stage.  
So the more it shines  
It goes away.

Surely then.  
See the curtain rising to show us once again  
All the magic of the Earth and the sky.  
See the more we find,  
the more we realize.

That every time  
See the laws of nature keep telling us like a friend  
Spirit of emotion  
Dancing through the wind  
High above, high above  
So sure inspired again.

Like I'm telling you this story now.  
Can we see through this mask of uncertainty?  
Surely now.

How can it be so hard,  
when all there is to know  
Don't be afraid of letting go.

It takes a loving heart  
To see and show this Love

Hold the light  
Hold the light  
Out of love will come a long, long glorious way

At the start of every day  
A child begins to pray  
And all we need to know  
is that the future is a friend of yours and mine."

Yes, "Holy Lamb," _Big Generator, _geophf's transcription


	62. Equals

**Chapter Summary: **"Uh, so when you say we're 'equals,' Rosalie, um, what exactly do you mean?" I asked as I looked in the eyes of my 'equal.' Yeah, so we're equals, now. Isn't that nice? I'll wake up from this dream, soon, I'm sure.

* * *

She was carrying me.

I looked up to her face, and it seemed like I was seeing her for the first time, and I had to memorize her every feature, her eyes, her eyebrows, her nose, her lips, her cheeks, her lips.

Everything about her now was essential for me to breathe, to be.

I had my arms around her neck, and my head was tucked into her shoulder, but I would glance up occasionally, to see if it were still _her_, for somehow she had changed.

Or, that isn't right. She was still her, Rosalie Hale, but somehow, something in me had changed.

I felt this incredible need to drink her in, every detail of her face, every whiff of her as I breathed her in, the strength of her arms holding me, the utter, complete, and unnerving silence of her chest where her heart should be beating.

I glanced up at her face again, and I felt an ache in my chest. I so wanted to stroke her cheek, but I felt incredibly shy around her, for some reason.

But then I dared, I brought my hand up to her cheek, just to touch it, even with my mittened hand, just to feel her cheek, just to reassure her it was okay.

Because her face said it wasn't okay. It was blank, ... thoughtful.

When I touched her cheek, she didn't flinch away, but she frowned, and she didn't look at me, as I was looking at her.

I so wish she would look at me.

I put my arm back around her neck, and tucked my head back into her shoulder. Her whole body radiated _'don't,' _and _'no,' ..._

_... _and _'I don't want.'_

She wasn't thoughtful now; no, her frown was displeased.

And ... I _was_ just happy, her holding me, and then, when I found I couldn't get up from the ground, that there was no strength in my legs, and really, my whole body was just so drained, fighting for my life, and then, fighting for my hope ... fighting against her, as she fought the very thought that she could be, that she actually _was,_ my hope.

All that, and I thought I had broken past something. I did, and I should be happy...

And I was. But ...

But Rosalie isn't. I can see it in her. She's holding me into her, and, at the same time, she's a million miles away from me in her thoughts, and even that's too close for her now.

She wants no part of me. I can see it.

And my happiness just kept melting away, leaving a quiet sadness and emptiness in me.

Rosalie is my hope. And I'm sad, ... because she is.

She's sad that she's my hope.

We stopped, and I looked about me. We were beside the felled tree.

She sat on the tree, on the opposite side of my 'seat,' that is: the side closer to the cabin, with me in her lap. I hung onto her neck.

"We need to talk," Rosalie said, and I felt the words in her chest.

I sighed. _Yeah._ The 'we need to talk' talk.

"Okay," I whispered sadly.

"It's not bad, baby," Rosalie reassured.

How come when somebody says they have to talk to you, and it's 'not bad,' it's like, it'd've been better if you just slit your own throat first, before they told you the 'not bad' thing that you just _know_ was going to devastate you, forever?

Rosalie unwrapped her arms from encircling me, and my legs slid to the ground. I forced my arms to fall from her neck, which was a nearly impossible thing to do, as my arms were screaming _'No!' _the whole time, and they were wanting to squeeze her more tightly into my embrace, not to let her go, as I was now forcing my arms to do.

I placed my arms down by my sides, and stared at the ground, waiting for her 'talk.'

She got up and sat on the other side of the trunk, placing the cross between us.

Wow.

Okay. Just wow.

She was probably being gentler than Edward was to her when he rejected her, but ...

But, _God, _her rejection _hurt._ And I wanted to hurt myself, I wanted to punch myself, over and over, into the ground, just like she did moments ago, so the physical pain would take my mind off the agony I felt in my chest, in my heart.

I kicked at the snow, listlessly.

"Baby?" she asked softly.

I smiled to the ground. And I wondered if I looked like her when she smiled like that, so sadly. It hurt. Everything hurt. But it really hurt, her being gentle to me because she was about to really hurt me, bad, and she knew it, but ... you know ... me? and me hoping in her? I knew why she couldn't have that. It was because of me. Because there was no way I could measure up, so she was going to be nice, but she was just going to let me know that I reached too high this time because she had no interest in me whatsoever. Just like Edward had no interest in her.

How come I'm on the receiving end of everything bad that happened to her? Royce rapes her, she takes that out on me. Her dad dies, so she takes me away from mine. Edward rejects her, so now it's her turn on me again.

It's not fair. It's just so not fair. Not fair to her, first, I guess, but it really hurts when she turns around and does it to me. I mean, can't she ... move past the hurt instead of passing it along?

"Baby?" she said again.

I'd better look at her quick, before she said that again, and that would tug on my heart too hard. I was tired of crying, but there always seemed to be more tears ready to fall.

"Yeah?" I said, my voice cracking, ... and I tried to look at her.

The Sun was kinda bright on this cold, crisp day, and it reflected off the snow, and it reflected off her more. It was hard to look at her directly, because it was like looking into the Sun. A perfect, cold, beautiful sun: Rosalie.

Her lips twitched up encouragingly to me.

"Remember when I said there were three things?"

"Three things?" I repeated dully.

"Yes, I told you two of them, and, well, ..." she looked away quickly then looked back, "I threw you across the snow, remember? Remember what I told you?"

"No," I said.

I couldn't even think back to before when she was holding me, because my mind recoiled at fierce, angry demon with her cruel, cruel smile taking me by force.

I felt sick, just thinking up to just before she fell off me, because I told her she was ...

I told her that she was raping me.

My face went ashen at the though, and my hands felt clammy.

Rosalie watched me and waited.

I swallowed. "No, Rosalie," I said finally, "I don't remember."

"I told you ... baby?"

Rosalie had started talking, but stopped when I looked down at the snow and started kicking it again.

I dragged my eyes up to look at her again.

"I told you," she said, "firstly, that you have to face the world, right? That it's not just you anymore. And I told you, secondly, that you aren't ordinary, but extraordinary, remember?"

"Okay," I said, agreeing, not because I remembered, but because I just left it all to her, too exhausted to think or to fight anymore.

"That was two things, but I told you there were three," she said.

I just looked at her, separated from me, and that's all I felt: the distance between us. The distance she put between us.

Her lips twitched.

I recognized little things in her now. When she did that, when she smiled encouragingly at me, and spoke softly like this, it meant to her that she had to treat me gently, because I was this close to breaking.

She's always right. About everything.

When she held me, it meant I had broken.

And that's how I felt again, broken, but I didn't feel her arms around me, and that absence ached.

She continued into my silence: "The third thing is that it doesn't stop. It never stops, until you do, and then it's too late, because, God willing, your body is six feet under, and your soul is going home to God."

Her smile again. "So aren't you glad, when you asked it to stop, that it ... didn't?"

I looked away and swallowed hard. "No," I answered quietly.

"Baby?"

I couldn't look at her. I didn't want her to see my tears.

"Baby, if it stopped then, that is, right here, you would've never found your hope, as you did. Wouldn't that have been a loss?"

I kicked at the snow and shrugged.

"Aren't you happy?" she asked, imploring.

"No," I said. All I could manage were one-word answers.

She was quiet for a moment.

"Why not? You were a moment ago," she said.

"It's just that ..." I started.

"Yes?" she asked, patiently.

I shrugged. "It's just that you're not happy, is all ... and, ... well, I'm sorry."

Rosalie regarded me unhappily and muttered: "... and the apology. Great."

"Well, I am," I said petulantly, shrugging again. "I mean, okay, you asked me what my hope was, and I told you, and ..." I shrugged again, "... you didn't like it, so ..."

The snow looked really kickable, so I returned doing just that.

"Shrugging, too. Bonus." The sarcasm was thick in her quiet voice.

I clenched my jaw.

"Okay, okay," Rosalie finally spoke up, impatience evident, "can we stop with the narcissistic self-pity party and get back to the here and now, please?"

Okay: ouch!

I grimaced. "Sure. Whatever," I said sullenly.

"Oh, my God!" Rosalie barked in disbelief. "What is this? It wasn't five minutes ago that I was _proud_ to be in your presence, standing for what you believed in, and now you just want to throw that all away, and for what? Some imagined slight that now has you sabotaging every gain you've worked so hard for?"

Wait.

What?

I looked up, confused. "You were proud of me?"

"No!" she retorted.

Oh. I guess I heard her wrong.

But then she continued forcefully, "It's not that I _was_ proud of you, I _am_ proud of you!"

"Even now, yes," she clarified. "Even as you throw it all away, I am proud of what you've accomplished. Don't you see how far you've come?"

"But you were, like, frowning," I said, "so I thought you were, like, trying to ... you know, say, 'Well, you know, that's nice and all, but ... you?'" And I gave an _ick_ look, showing her thinking about _ick-_me.

"Ah! I see!" she said, her face showing a dawning realization. "You wanted me to shower you with affection, hugging you and kissing your toes and having me sigh longing sighs — _'Aww!'_ I would say — as I gave you big eyes of devotion? Did you think that you would make your declaration and that would cause me to melt into a puddle of mush? Did you think I would fundamentally change just because _you_ have this life-changing revelation?"

I blushed.

"Uh," I said quietly, looking back at the ground. "I guess, putting it that way, ... yeah, I guess I didn't expect ..." I blushed again. "Well, I guess I didn't know what to expect."

What I really didn't expect was for Rosalie to be doing any of that what she just said. My feet tingled with the thought of her bending down and kissing my toes.

Okay, my face was really red now. In fact, I was blushing so hard, that even my _chest_ was blushing, now, too.

"No," she disagreed, but mildly. "I put forward you _did_ expect me to change, and when you saw that I didn't do all of that, you reconstructed your victory as a failure. But I think you missed it. Didn't I do those just those things after you made your declaration? Didn't I hold you, just as you hoped? Didn't I just now carry you to this spot when you didn't have the strength to rise from the ground? Didn't I, after all, do exactly as I said?"

"Uh, well..." I contributed helpfully.

"...except for the toe kissing," she added quickly.

"Um," I said, blushing still.

"Oh," she added, "and the big doe eyes. Let me rectify that right now. Are you ready?"

"Huh?" I said, looking over at her.

And then I almost gagged.

There she was, giving be big, big pleading eyes, then sighed out a prolonged _'Awwww!'_ clasping her hands in front of her.

I actually did gag in surprise. _"Gah! Rosalie!"_ I exclaimed. "Warn a girl before you do that, huh?"

She was laying it on so thick, she had me, Bella-the-pancake drowning in three inches of syrupy her!

She snickered, watching me try to recover from her poor waif look.

I guess she knew how to make a girl blush, no question about that. But her attempt the lighten the mood — and I _hope_ that's what she's trying to do — worked a little bit. But I still wasn't sure.

"But, ..." I countered weakly, "you were frowning at me when you carried me over here, and now you're sitting over there, away from me!"

"As for the frowning," she said, "I wasn't frowning at you. I was mulling over this situation. Remember last night how you crawled into my arms, being all of the big girl you claimed to be, and I said how you made everything so hard? ... Not that you cared."

"Yeah," I said, embarrassed and stung for being caught being mean to her again.

I mean: I say she's my hope, but then I said _'Oh, poor vampire me!'_ sarcastically to her, not even caring what she has to go through, putting up with me. How inconsiderate is that?

"See," she continued, "when I said that, you may not realize that that statement applies to you. You place your hope in me, and that means, yes, I am now measured against your expectations."

"No, Rosalie, no!" I began defensively. "I don't expect you to ..."

"Shhh!" she shushed me gently, her index finger on her lips.

I shushed.

"You say you don't have these expectations, because you don't want to impose on me, yes? Because it isn't the polite thing to do. But if you truly had no expectations, you wouldn't be in this funk."

She looked significantly at me.

"You _do_ have expectations for me, and that _does_ make it harder for me, because, accepting this rôle, I now have to measure up to them, but — please listen to me — it makes it _much_ harder on you, for you have to now be strong enough to have this hope in me, even as I disappoint you, just as I said I will."

"Isn't that faith, after all?" she asked quietly. "You have to believe in the conviction you held so strongly to a few moments ago, that I am your hope."

I felt my eyebrows creasing. "So ... you're saying that you are? You're not, like, fighting it?"

She regarded me. "Who said I am your hope? Me? or you?"

"I did ..." I said quietly.

"And do you believe that?" she asked.

I pursed my lips. "Yes," I said, again quietly, but firmly.

I was willing to fight her again for this. But she didn't look like she was fighting, and this was so surprising! Isn't she supposed to be angry and shouting right about now?

Why wasn't she?

"Really? You believe that with all your might?" she demanded.

"Yes," I said, firmly, and puzzled.

"And with all your heart, and all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength?"

Okay, this was weirding me out, but I went along with it.

"Yes," I said, quietly.

"Then, ..." she said, sadly. "Isn't that enough?"

I realized now what she was doing. She was asking me to believe in myself.

"Yeah," I said, but then added: "but it'd be nice if you were okay with it, too."

Rosalie shook her head in disbelief and laughed quietly. "You are so strange!" she exclaimed.

"Huh?" I asked, surprised.

She smiled at me. "When Royce, of the 'royal' King family of Rochester, began courting me, I took it as a matter of course. Of course, I thought, he would court me. Why wouldn't he? It made perfect sense. And then, later, when Edward refused me, I didn't bemoan my fate with a lamentation of: _'Oh, what's wrong with me?'_ No, what I said was quite the opposite, wondering what his problem was. I don't measure my self-worth by what others do or think. I could care less. I set the bar, and _they_ have to measure up."

"Not everybody can be you, Rosalie." I said quietly.

"The one and only," she responded just as quietly, her voice filled with pride, even as her eyes danced at the pomposity of her own statement.

"But," she continued, "you seek the approval of others, even in the firmest of your convictions, and that's ... _strange_ ... to me."

She raised her palms and shrugged.

I was about to apologize for what? being a wimp and needing her approval in what I believed, I guess, when she spoke again.

"I will ... _try_ to accommodate this."

World?

Rocked?

Yes.

I tried to puzzle that one through, and then finally gave up.

"Okay, who are you?" I asked her calmly, but on the inside I was flabbergasted.

"Rosalie Lillian Hale," she responded without hesitation.

I shook my head. "Okay," I said, totally disbelieving just how calm she was about this new her, "you really _have_ changed!"

I heard awe in my voice.

"No, I haven't," she said, still calm, looking me right in the eye.

"Okay, Rosalie ..." I said reasonable, "this morning? yesterday? and whenever else? 'Accommodating' wouldn't be the word I would use to describe our conversations. No, I'd say they were more like ..." and paused thoughtfully.

"Dogmatic? Unyielding? Absolute?" she suggested.

"I suppose so ..." I said, thinking those words could be synonyms for 'angry' and 'shouting.'

"So?" she shrugged.

"Well," I answered, "that's a really big change!"

She smirked. "Perhaps," she equivocated. "That is one way of looking at it. Another way is this: wasn't I seeking to hold out for the best for you before? Do you not see that? And, in each conversation, didn't you take something away from that? Didn't you grow from each one? Are you the same person you were yesterday? The day before? I argue that you have taken tremendous strides forward, and it shows, here, and now. Why would I talk to you in the same way as before when you are different now? But am I consistent? I put forward that I am. I will accommodate, but does that mean that I've turned to mush? Do you think I'm going to back down from my principles or back away from who I am?"

I thought about that, then said, "Honestly, Rosalie ..."

"Yes, please. I do prefer your honesty," she interjected, and smiled at me, knowingly.

I rolled my eyes, and she snickered.

"Well," I continued, "I mean, put that way, I'd say there'd be no way you'd do that, but this is all so new to me, that I don't know what to expect, and ..."

I paused, hesitating.

"Yes?" she asked.

I said cautiously, "What happens when you ... flip?" and flipped my mitten over in the air, indicating her infamous mercurial mood swings.

She shrugged off my question easily. "That entirely depends upon you."

"Uh, what?"

"What am I to you?" she asked quietly.

"You're my hope, Rosalie," I said it just as quietly.

And saying it, I could taste every single word, and still not believe I was actually saying those words, that she was _letting_ me say them.

"Do you believe that?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then," she responded, "you will know what to do when that time comes."

I frowned. "I don't know what you mean, Rosalie."

She sighed. "You don't have to."

"Uhhhm," I said, helplessly. "I don't get it."

She looked away thoughtfully.

"Yesterday," she said, "during quiet time, something ... happened ... and you saw that I wasn't in control, so you took that control and did what you had to do. Did you need me to tell you _a priori_ that 'Oh, when this happens, do this, and when that happens, do that'? No. You saw what was needing to be done, and you did it. I don't have the answers. But you do. You have hope, and you have faith in your belief. When I ..." and she flipped her hand over, imitating my action, "... flip, you'll know to hold me to account, to understand what's going on and take whatever action you need to, to forgive me, or not, or ..." She shrugged easily. "You'll know, from your conviction what's to be done. I can say that I will be on my guard, because I will, but that doesn't mean that I won't disagree with you, or that I won't become angry, or I won't fail, because you've seen me do all these things, and you'll forgive me, or you won't."

I shook my head, stunned.

"Rosalie ..." I said, "you're, like, treating me, like ... an equal."

She grinned ... I swear to God, she almost looked shy.

I mean, shy for her. Not shy for me, okay?

"Yup," she said easily, "I'm 'like' treating you 'like' ... an equal ..."

Then she added an extra: "... 'like.'"

And she smirked.

_"Hmmphf!" _I said crossly, but I couldn't repress my smile.

I stuck my tongue out at her, but at that she then became quiet and just raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement.

... Oh, yeah, that. I remember. The last time we exchanged tongue-sticks, like, just less than an hour ago, it led to me in the snow and her on top of me, where she proceeded to take off my clothes and to scare me to death.

But ...

_Rosalie is treating me like an equal?_

I couldn't get my head around that.

But then I did.

"If I'm your equal," I said, "then ... will you let me go now?"

"No," Rosalie said after contemplating me, and then she added: "Never, ... you know too much now. You knew too much when I extracted you from your town to this place here. I can never let you go."

"Oh," I said quietly.

"But I'm proud of you for asking that," she said, "as an equal."

I almost cringed.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Rosalie," I said, "I'm just not used to this, and it doesn't make sense. I mean: in no way am I your equal. You're smarter, and, like, way stronger, and ..." I shrugged, "... and everything. And you're just handing me this. It's like ..."

But I didn't know what it's like.

Rosalie paused a moment, thinking.

"Being equal doesn't mean we're the same, and it doesn't mean that I don't have things that I can do better or can contribute more, just as it doesn't mean that you have nothing to contribute, because you do. Being equal doesn't make everything easier, in fact, it makes many things harder, because I cannot presume any more, nor can you fall back on: 'Well, Rosalie will do that, because she's better at everything.' We're going to have to work at this ... 'equality' ... and we're going to be bumping into each other as we do that. Surely we'll have roles that will fall out of this, but ... perhaps most disappointing is that, on the surface, nothing changes, really. We had things to do before, and those same things need to be done now, regardless of our respective — and respected — status. You have things to learn before, and you still have things to learn now, and ... I have knowledge and experience that you don't. But, being an equal, it's easier to see that I have things I was assuming, that are wrong. I have to learn, and you have been a better teacher to me than anyone has ever been to me in my existence."

I gasped. "What could I possibly teach you, Rosalie?"

She looked at me. "I've never had an equal. Ever. You stood up for yourself, and you believed in something, no matter what I threw at you. And the thing that you believed in is me. No one has ever believed in me."

I stared at her in amazement.

"You taught me that there is something beyond intellect and reason," she continued, "and, if you listen to me now, as I do, then you see that I'm relying on my intellect and reason to see that, so I have much to learn from you in the matters of the heart, where I have failed so miserably my entire existence."

"But, wait, Rosalie," I broke in, "I've been telling you from basically day one that you _are_ kind and you _are_ caring, ... you're not a failure there, you're ..."

"Yes, I am," she denied me.

"No, you're not," I said, "You just don't see it that way, but ..."

"But you do," she said. "See? I didn't see it that way. I still don't. But you do. And you have been telling me from _precisely_ day one, and I didn't listen to you, because I didn't believe you. I didn't have to. But you're an equal now. Something I've never experienced, so I have to at least listen to you now and consider what you're saying ... and still disagree, where I do, or learn from you ... if I am able."

"See?" she said, and shrugged.

I shook my head. "I just don't believe it."

"Then don't," she said. "If you're going to treat me as an equal, then you also have to try to drop how you idolize me. It blinds you to your abilities, you know, and then you feel lesser than, not an equal, and then you don't feel you can contribute coming from that inferior view."

"Well, okay, but you have to do that, too, you know." I came right back.

"Yes," she said, "I know. But I also won't allow you wallow in a sulk nor to denigrate yourself nor to fall back on doing or thinking the old familiar patterns because it's easy or what you're used to, even though these things stunt your growth and hurt you as a person."

"Rosalie," I said, "same for same, okay? Same for same."

She smiled sadly. "Do you see how being equal is harder, not easier?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know if it's harder or easier, all I know is this is just way different and it feels really weird, but it could be really good, I think, Rosalie."

"That's what I think," I averred.

She looked at me. "You're strong. Do you know that?"

"Uh," I said, blushing, looking away.

"You are strong. Do you know that?" she asked again.

"Uh, thank you," I said shyly.

"You are welcome," she responded easily.

I looked at her, beyond the cross, her back straight, perfectly poised, totally at ease and in control of everything, taking even this in stride.

"This is hard," I admitted. "'cause I just want to ... you know?"

She smirked. "I did say it would be hard. It's equally hard for me. I don't compliment. I don't tell people I'm proud of them. To me, they either do what they said they were going to do, or they get the fuck out of my way, and self-effacing people?"

She blew out an angry puff of air. "Don't even get me started. You either have a purpose or you have no place near me, and you knew that right off the bat. So, me? Saying I'm proud of you?"

She shrugged. "It's hard. To me, I was ... yes, I was so proud that you stood up for yourself, and I thought you would just know that, but then you fell apart? And then you lost all that ground you made? I just ... don't work that way. You are so different than me."

She didn't say these words with distaste. She said them factually.

"I'm glad you told me you're proud of me, Rosalie," I said quietly. "It really ... It really meant a lot to me."

I looked back down at the snowy ground.

"I know it did, baby," she said.

"Do you ..." I said, "do you feel ..." I said.

I kept trying not to say 'like,' and 'like' kept trying to be said.

"Do you feel protective of me, or something? You keep calling me 'baby,' and 'sweetie' and stuff."

I really, really couldn't look at her. I don't care if she doesn't like me shy, because shy was very much what I felt.

"Yes, I do," she said.

I snuck a peek at her.

She was looking down at the ground, too.

"I thought," she said, "that when you asked your question... Well, talk is one thing, and direct experience something else. Talking about a fire doesn't get you warm, but it also doesn't get you burned. I thought you were ready. But I was ... wrong. You are much more innocent than what I thought possible, and I ... kept pushing, and ..."

She waved back in the direction we came from, head bent, hair hiding her eyes from me.

I recognized that look. I have that look, ... when I'm shy, or when I'm ... ashamed.

"You've never been wrong before, have you?" I asked. "You're always right, right?"

"Hm?" she asked, snapping out of it. "No, of course not. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'd prefer to be wrong. When I'm right, I learn nothing. When I'm wrong, I see my error, correct it, and am better. When something is my fault, I can fix it. If I'm right, and it's everybody else's fault, then there's nothing for me to do but feel wronged, which is a pointless exercise. That's why when you asked if it's your fault that everything's hard, and I said, 'yes,' I was surprised you were shocked. For me, if you told me something is my fault? I would've thanked you, because that's one more thing that I would make right, where everything else that everybody else does is in the state of shit that it is."

Then she muttered to herself: "Fucking losers, everywhere!"

Then she continued, looking at me, again: "And everything hard? You asked me if everything's hard? Ridiculous! You know why? I don't give a f..." She bit her lip. "I don't care if it's hard or if it's not hard, when I set out to do something, I do it. I wish more people in the world would just see this. The world is all f.."

She sighed.

"You don't like my profanity. I see you wince every single time."

"It's okay, Rosalie," I said, "I guess you people Back East speak that way."

"Yes, we do," she said, "we don't have time for this polite ... circumlocution." She waved dismissively at the word 'circumlocution.' "But it's not 'okay.' You don't like it, so I will try to avoid it."

"But you didn't curse when I first met you, Rosalie," I said, "that's what I don't get."

She smiled. "Finishing," was her explanation. "You measure a person from a distance with politeness, and then, when you know them and respect them, you can speak directly, saying what you mean, and how you mean it."

I shrugged. "We don't curse like that out here, even when a person gets to know a person, we call _that_ respecting a person."

"So, you're all polite to each other, then?" she asked.

I shrugged again. "Yeah."

"Uh-huh," she said, disapprovingly.

"But you said there should be more people like you," I said. "Did you ..." I paused, "... you don't like it that I'm not like you, right?"

Rosalie looked back down at the ground.

"Yes, and no," she said finally.

"What kinda answer is that?" I demanded.

"A truthful one. A real one," she said. "I am exactly my mother. She made everything work, and she scared the life out of anyone who got in her way, ... except me, who met her measure, for measure, and then some. And I saw, ..." and she waved behind her, "that that was what I was doing. I was becoming my mother, and I was molding you into me, and I saw that in committing to that course, I would just kill everything in you that ... well, made you alive, and beautiful, and perfectly who you are."

"You're idolizing me, Rosalie," I scolded.

"No, I'm not," she said.

"Yes, you ..."

"Shh!" she said, and smiled.

"You know, Miss Equal," I groused, "I get to shush you back sometimes, too, now."

She laughed quietly.

"What I'm doing," she said, "is saying that what I was doing is all I know how to do, and I saw, so clearly, that it was falling wrongly, and hurting you, but I didn't know how else to do it. And then ..." she said reverently, "you stood up for yourself, and, no matter what damage I've done, I just hoped that ..." she shrugged, "... that you can and will stand on your own two feet, and you don't need me twisting you into being another me, no matter how right I feel about things."

"Nor how righteous?" I ribbed.

"Yes," she smiled, "nor that."

"So, the 'equal' thing?" I asked.

She nodded.

I guess it made more sense to me now.

"So that's why you were frowning, huh?"

She nodded again.

I smiled, "I thought it was because you weren't happy ... well, okay, that you really didn't like that ... you know ..."

"Say it," she demanded, her voice singing.

"That you're my hope," I finally admitted, blushing.

"If you can't say it, you don't believe it," she lectured.

"Yes, Miss I'm-not-molding-you-anymore," I chided.

She shrugged. "It's hard. And there's things that I can give you, as a woman who's been through life, and failed, that maybe you can take from me, if you want, and I hope that you do, so ... you don't fail like I did."

"Okay, I guess," I said, "but why are you over there?"

"Because you're hot bod is giving me warm tingly sensations trembling through my entire body whenever I'm near you?" she quipped.

_"GAH!"_ I squawked, and looked away before all the snow melted off the planet.

She snickered wickedly.

"Well, it's true!" she exclaimed, defensively, "the things I would do to that hot bod of yours if I were on your side of the tree trunk? ... _Oh, mama!"_

_"EEEEKKK!" _I covered my ears with my mittens, that had managed not to burn off my head somehow.

She was laughing openly now.

It did not help — _at all!_ — that I had been looking longingly, if not surreptitiously, at her with, well, _longing feelings_ these past few days, but 'hot bod' and 'oh, mama!' from her? She _had _to be joking.

Which stung, a little bit, even though I knew she was just teasing to lighten the mood.

"You are so cute when you magically turn yourself into a tomato like that!" she proclaimed affectionately.

_"Gee, thanks!" _I mumbled, sarcastically, trying to recover a measure of dignity, and failing utterly, I'm sure.

"But seriously," she said, a smile still in her voice, after a happy sigh escaped her lips. "I'm over here, and you're over there, because you're on the safe side."

I looked up at that. "The 'safe side'?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "You asked. I'm going to answer. I tried and fai-..."

"Rosalie," I waved quickly. "Really, forget it. Really. Honest. I don't need to know anymore. I really, really don't care."

Rosalie smiled sadly. "Baby, you're growing up. And mommy never told you about anything coming up, and I'm sure daddy never said anything, am I right?"

"Said anything about what?" I asked.

She just looked at me and smiled. "About coming of age ...? About boys ...?"

"Oh," I said. "Well, actually, he did talk to me one time about that."

"Oh, really?" she sounded surprised. "What did he say?"

I remember it now. Pa and me're cleaning our weapons after a day out on the shooting range. I smiled at his advice.

"Pa told me," I said the Rosalie, "'Bells,' he boomed, 'There're only two gentlemen in the World you can trust: Mr. Smith,' he said, ..."

... and I imitated him putting one revolver on the cleaning rag on the kitchen table...

"... 'and Mr. Wesson!' ..."

... and with my other hand I imitated him dropping a rifle on the kitchen table, and made a _clunk_ing sound as the weapon, safety armed, chamber cleared, but still pointing away from us both, hit it, denting the wood.

"... and he laughed after he told me this, so I smiled with him."

Rosalie tilted her head to the side, watching me as I relived that memory.

Finally she said, "Actually, that's pretty good advice ..."

"Isn't it, though?" I said, pleased that I could teach her something.

"Yes," she said, "I wish I had taken it when it was timely for me."

"Huh," I said, and wondered if my little story made her feel bad all over again.

She pressed on, "But he didn't say anything about ... feelings? about being a woman? ..."

I hollered with laughter. "Pa?" I asked incredulously.

She smiled along with my laughter.

"So, now, here you are, asking these questions, and here I am, and I can tell you about it, but, again, fire? warmth? And I tried to show you, but then I hurt you. So, you're over there, and being over there, you're safe. And I'm over here, so I'll show you on me, okay?"

"Rosalie, really, you don't have to," I insisted.

"I know, baby, I know. But you did say the question was important to you."

"Not any more, really, Rosalie." I said.

"Not any more, but for how long?" she asked. "And then you'll be too shy to ask again. Let me show you, okay? And you'll be safe over there, okay?"

"Rosalie," I said. "I don't want you raping yourself, okay? Not on my account. I got the idea already."

She laughed lightly. "Baby, I couldn't even get to second base with you, I couldn't even _describe_ second base, without you becoming incapacitated with hysteria. You don't 'got the idea.' What you have is a half-truth, which is much more dangerous than simple ignorance."

She was so serious speaking now.

"Rosalie, ..." I entreated.

"You know," she said, "you are farther along than I ever was in life. You found a truth. You found your hope. And no one can ever take that from you if you don't let them. But there is a lie that the whole world lives. You're living it right now. I see it in your whole being. I saw in how you carried yourself around Edward, around me. Please let me show you the lie. Please? If you see it, you'll know it for what it is, and then you'll have what no one else in this world has, what I never had. You'll have a choice. Okay? Please?"

I bit my lip. "Okay." I capitulated.

"Okay," she said sadly. "You're safe, okay? Stay there. I'm going to go, and I'll come right back, and this," she pointed to her side of the tree, "is my bedroom back at the Hale Estate, okay?"

"Uh, ... okay?" I said.

"Please," she said. "Please see this. It's going to be bad. Very bad. But please don't look away, or you'll miss it. You'll miss the lie, just like everybody else does. And I really, really don't want to have to do this twice, okay?"

"Okay?" I squeaked, even more scared and confused now.

"You're safe, okay?" she said. "Stay there. I won't see you, okay? But please just ..."

She bit her lip and stopped. Then she hung her head, rose fluidly from the tree, and walked away, disappearing into the forest like a mist, evaporating in the morning sun.

"Rosalie?" I called weakly, grabbing hold of the cross, now really scared. Not feeling safe at all.

Nothing.

I waited.

Nothing.

"Rosalie?" I called, my voice quavering.

... and then, coming out of the forest, I saw her.

I could not believe my eyes.

* * *

**A/N: **Happy fourth anniversary to us! Today, December 26, Boxing Day, 2008 was the day when I published chapter 1 of _My Sister Rosalie_. All my best to you and my girls, who are now equals. I _did not _see this one coming. That is, not until way into Book II, but now both girls are growing up so, so quickly.


	63. Safe Side

**Chapter summary:** Here I am, nice and safe, on the "safe side," and I get to watch how Rosalie's life is destroyed, second by second, and see how sweet, little, innocent me was the one to do this to her.

* * *

Have you ever seen someone that you thought you knew, but then you find out you didn't know her at all?

Rosalie was emerging from the forest, but she wasn't walking purposefully. There was a hesitancy in her step, and the way she carried herself, head down, looking out of the corner of her eye? There was a demureness to her, and if I didn't know better I would've said a _shyness_ to the way she looked. But I knew her better than that. Rosalie wasn't shy. Not the one I know.

But this ... person, this _... shy girl,_ emerging from the forest wasn't the Rosalie I knew. Because beside the shyness to her, there was a sense of expectation, of excitement to her that I didn't know what it was for.

Oh, and there was somebody with her.

Yeah. That.

She was holding somebody's hand, and she was talking to him quietly, and smiling at him, like ...

Okay, I saw red now, because she was talking to him like I ... wish she would've talked to me, if she noticed me that way, which she didn't.

I didn't see who it was. She was walking with him up a slope, and sitting on the tree trunk, I had the advantage of height for the line-of-sight, but the trees were thick, and they both were coming up from behind a thicket, so I barely saw her, and I couldn't see him at all. I just saw them walking up, hand-in-hand, like really good friends.

I mean, like, really, _really_ good friends.

I ground my teeth as I wondered who it could be. Did she meet a boy in the town where she bought all the supplies? She asked me about boys ... did she find one for herself? I mean, it must be pretty boring for her just looking after a crybaby girl in a cabin, and she said she had to go 'hunting' often, ... I just didn't know that when she said that she wasn't hunting for her food but hunting for ... well ...

But who was I to ...

_Fuck._

Yeah. Who was I to tell her who she could see or not see? She said we were equals, but that doesn't mean there's an understanding between us. I mean, why would there be? After I so _obviously_ told her to keep her hands off me, why would I have the right to tell her where she could or couldn't put her hands on, and on who she could do ... that.

I just realized I said 'fuck' to myself.

I waited with baited breath to see who this asshole ... I mean, this boy, who must be very nice, because Rosalie picked him, and she only picks the very best ...

_except for me ..._

and, ... shoot! Rosalie told me not to denigrate myself anymore, and I goddamn better step up my game if I didn't want her to leave me high and dry forever for Mr. L.R. there, Mr. Lucky Right, and all the best to them and maybe she'd let me be the maid of honor, but she'd better kick me out of the church because I'd sure as hell have something to say when the priest asked, 'Does anyone have objections to this matrimony? Speak now or forever hold your peace.' and I would _not_ be holding any peace right then, I tell you what! I'd be so like, _'Excuse me, but I just wanna say that ...'_

Rosalie emerged from the thicket with Mr. Right...

But...

Okay, something's really, really wrong with me or my eyesight, because he wasn't there. Or, she was walking with _somebody,_ because you can't walk, hand-in-hand, and fake that you're walking with somebody when you're not. You can't pretend, at every step, adjusting to their step, being slowed down by them a little bit, turning to them to see they walk over a fallen branch okay, ... all that. You can't do that pretend exactly like there's somebody there, when there isn't. You can't have a pretend friend and actually physically adjust to them continuously. I know. When I was a little girl, my pretend friends, Leesa and Weesa, were there and my hand, but then they weren't and my parents thought it was so cute and asked about my 'pretend friends' and I told them that they weren't _'pretend_ friends.'

But now I know they actually were.

Rosalie wasn't with a pretend friend. There was the weight and shape of his hand in hers, she made space for him navigating the walk up the little hill, she talked to him, and she _listened_ to him as he spoke back to her, she looked at him, and ... _oh, God, ..._ _smiled_ at him, _shyly!_

Was he a ghost, then, I wondered. Could vampires summon ghosts? ... and be friends with them? ... I mean, obviously, right? Ghosts wouldn't have blood, so Rosalie could have a conversation with one without the consternation she had around me and my blood that she had with me. But I thought ghosts were immaterial, right? So how could she be holding his hand? Maybe I knew just as much about ghosts now as I did about vampires before I met Rosalie and the others. Which was squat.

But if it were a ghost, what ghost would Rosalie summon to ...

_Oh, my God! Royce King!_

I flipped back over the back side of the tree trunk and hid there, peeking out over the top.

I don't know why she would summon up Royce King, but she did say that she wanted them to love each other and be husband and wife, maybe she took so long out in the forest because she and Royce had a talk and made up and now their back together again?

But if he's a ghost, maybe he can read minds now like Rosalie can? And then he'd read my mind, and ...

And he'd kill me.

Jealous husbands, and all that. It happens. You hear about it when you're in law enforcement.

And Rosalie said this is the safe side and that she wouldn't see me, because maybe she was looking into the ghost-world or something, but did she tell Royce that rule, huh? No. I don't think so with her looking at him all giddy like that. She probably forgot all about me sitting over here with that dismissive 'Excuse me, do I even know you?' look.

So maybe crosses really worked against ghosts, unlike for (real) vampires — (as opposed to 'fake vampires'?) — but if Royce wanted to chat with Rosalie and sat on this side, and then, well, he'd see me, and that'd be it for Bella — no more equals, no more nothing — 'cause I'd be toes-up and pushing up daisies after Royce put his cold, immaterial hand through my chest and squeezed my heart 'til it stopped beating.

I wonder if I'd feel my blood freeze as he was killing me...

Good thing I was already nearly scared halfway to death, because my whimper of fear died in my chest before it reached my throat.

... Yeah, I know, I sure do think great thoughts to keep my spirits up, don't I?

Rosalie and her Royal Kingly ghost-bestie were nearly up to the tree, on the 'dangerous side,' I noticed — thank God! — when she stopped short, looked around furtively, and then ... _opened a door? to her room?_

I was totally flipping out. There was no door there. It _just...wasn't...there!_ but she opened it, stepped through with her new buddy-for-forever, peeked her head out, looking around quickly and closed it again. She then moved to her 'bed,' and sat on the very edge of it, looking toward the 'door' ... I guess toward ... _him._

Was she in an alternate world with him? So she could see him? And they were actually in her bedroom back at her home, I mean, her 'estate'?

Who the hell owned 'estates'? I mean, besides super rich people.

And I thought chicken cordon bleu was reaching high. No wonder why she laughed right in my face when I suggested that as supper to her and her family ... she probably had that on off-days of the month or year, you know: when they weren't having the mayor or some poets and artists over, and stuff.

What happened if I walked to the other side of the cross? Would I be transported to the ghost-world? Would the cross disappear? Then I would be trapped and could never come back to this world, because I'm not a magical vampire like Rosalie is.

I gripped onto the reality of the tree trunk, squatting behind it, really, really hoping Rosalie was right about the safe side.

Rosalie spoke: "Yeah, this is my room."

"What?" I asked, then screamed to myself: _shut-up! shut-up! SHUT UP!_

Because it was now I realized that she wasn't speaking to me at all, she was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking straight ahead, looking slightly up, and she was talking with him, with Royce.

"Yeah," she said and shrugged, "it is pretty nice, I guess."

"Huh? My parents?" she said.

I just looked at her, trying to understand what was going on. My mind was so caught between reality and unreality I had no idea what was which anymore.

Then she smiled slightly and said, "No, they're out for the rest of today and won't be home 'til late tonight ... some banking dinner-dance-reception-whatever they always have to go to to."

Then she rolled her eyes, putting on an air of bored indifference, as if her parents left her to her own devices every night, because she was so mature and grown-up: a self-possessed woman.

And that's the surprising thing that I saw for the first time in my life, for now, Rosalie, finally, didn't look any of those things. Instead, she looked like a young teenage girl, so obviously trying to appear grown up, ... but looking so much younger and innocent and sweet for her bravado.

"Yeah-yeah," she said, sounding tolerant, _"so the boring_ for you, Edward, because you're just _so sophisticated _about everything, aren't you?" And she laughed easily.

Wait.

Did she just say ... _Edward? _

_EDWARD?_

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! How did he find us? or her? And only 'her,' as I hope not me, I hope she didn't tell him I was here, especially after what I've just been thinking about him!

And how did he turn invisible? Was that his special power? Rosalie could read minds, or my mind, because she said Edward could read anybody's mind but mine, so did they have, like, opposite powers there, but he could turn invisible, too?

That must be it, because I remember he left me flowers — _in my room! while I was sleeping in there! _— and how could he do that without anybody in town noticing, unless he could turn invisible, right?

But why couldn't he see me? Did it work both ways? He couldn't see me if I couldn't see him?

And why did Rosalie invite him to her room? I thought she loathed the guy. Why is she all chummy with him now?

Wait. She said 'parent_s'_ as in _both_ parents, but she said her father died, and like, a long time ago, too, like a half-a-year ago or something... did she go back into the past? Is she in the past now, with Edward, in her room?

Why the hell would she bring Edward to her room with her parents out? You're not supposed to have people visiting you without your parents chaperoning, you know, you could get into really big trouble if you did that. _And, worse! _People would talk about you behind your back.

I was really, really going to have to talk about that with her after we got back into the safe and warm cabin away from this super-spooky haunted woods.

I swear to God, this place gives me the willies sometimes, the snow talks to me and the past haunts hidden groves ... and I'm on the 'safe side' of the forest? because I've got a cross that does what to vampires?

Yeah, right! Some talisman! Really helpful! ... _not!_

"Edward?" she said suddenly surprised, breaking into my ruminations, then she looked right beside herself on her bed and asked: "What are you doing?"

Then she said no more, because her head snapped back and she threw up her arms defensively and grunted out a _"Mmmnhh!"_

And I jumped a little in place, scared by her sudden movement.

But then her stiffened back relaxed, and her flailing arms did too, and then they went in front of her and wrapped inches from her face.

I've seen that happen. When two of the older kids in school graduated and got married, they were so ... open about it ... I mean, he even kissed her right at the wedding reception and everything! And instead of smacking him across the face, she wrapped her arms around his head and neck, and kissed right back. Hard.

I was just a little girl, so it was like a major _eww!_ moment for me, and I hid behind my parents' legs, but looking at it again, right in front of me now ...

Something was happening to me ... _inside._ And I didn't know what it was, and frankly, I didn't want to know. Just too many things were happening to me today, and I was afraid my head was about to explode.

And just like that young bride, Rosalie kissed Edward back, and they were kissing long, and they were kissing hard.

And whatever it was that was happening in my tummy, seeing them kissing like that? It turned from tightness into acid, and it hurt as it burned in me, and I couldn't look because I was so grossed out by their careless disregard for propriety and for other people's feelings, and I finally understood what _'get a room!'_ meant. I've heard at the bar when Pa took me and the deputies out after a long week — I had a _coke_, okay, so don't give me that look, okay? — the boys cat-calling to each other as one deputy would order a drink for a girl at the bar and they would look at each other across the room, and the other deputies would shout out _'get a room!'_ and Pa would nudge the guy and say, 'She looks nice, go talk to her,' and the guy would turn green and run to the bathroom.

Rosalie was kissing Edward back so hard, it made me want to puke like that deputy, and shout, _'Oh, for Chrissake! Get a room!'_

But they did 'get a room,' they were in _her_ room ... and that's what you did when you got a room.

It was so _disgusting!_

And no, I'm not pissed at all, thank you for asking.

But they just kept kissing and kissing, until I was like ... _Boring!_ But Rosalie didn't seem bored at all, in fact, she seemed to like it which pissed me off more, for some reason, and then she sank down onto her 'bed,' fully lying down on it, her arms still wrapped around Edward as they kissed.

But then she squirmed, shifting onto her back on the bed, then she jerked, and squirmed again, scooting away from Jerkward, just a little bit, then broke away, dropping her hands to her chest, protectively and at the same time violently jerking her head back and away.

"Edward! Edward!" she exclaimed. "Not so fast! Jesus! Take me out to dinner or something first, but ... _uhhh!"_

And I saw her throw her back, fully, exposing her neck, and I saw her throat working, as she jerked her head from side to side to side, and her hands ... her hands were trying to cover her breasts, and being jerked away, then trying to cover her breasts, and being very forcefully moved away.

And then ... she gave up? She didn't relax, but her movements became less violent, her head was still thrown all the way back, but now she was breathing in huge, throaty gasps, almost grunting, and her hands fell to her sides, but she arched her back, so her breasts were jutting straight up, very tight against the material of her shirt; their shape very clearly defined.

And then ...

And then she quietly lifted her shirt ... up and over her breasts, leaving herself fully exposed, her shirt up to her chin, her breasts heaving, her nipples so hard, her back arching, sometimes side-to-side, first presenting one breast for attention, then the other.

And all the while she would bend her head forward, and get and give heavy kisses and then she would throw her head back, panting, mewing, sounding exhausted, but sounding so filled with desire for this not to stop.

And then I realized ...

_Oh, God!_

... and the tears started to fall ...

... that this was ... that she was now showing me 'first base' and 'second base' ... and she was showing me this on herself, because ... because ...

Because I was such a fucking too-scared little shit for her to show this to me ... that could have been me, kissing her, instead of Edward. That could have been me, making her cry out like that, and bite her lip, and the back of her fist like that, instead of Edward.

Or ... that didn't feel right ... No, not that. Not me on top of her like that, but it could've been me, mewing, letting her fondle my tiny, tiny little titties as she kissed me and kissed me and kissed me, and not like Edward kissed her, _hard, _and, _forceful, _and _brutal, _but like she said she would for me: _gently, sweetly ..._ like a woman kisses. _Softer._

And my whole chest just _hurt_ in sympathy of thinking of her doing that to me, and I felt so _ashamed._ I felt so ashamed of myself that instead of allowing this to happen, instead of allowing her to kiss me and hold me like that in the snow, I screamed _'stop-stop-rape-rape!'_ and guaranteed she would _never_ look at me or even think about that again.

So now she had to show me this on herself.

And the from the pit of my stomach, the acid churned, and then spoke to me.

_She ain't __showing__ you shit, you dumb bitch, _it spat viciously, _she's __for __real__ getting it on with the __guy__ she wants to be with, since you are so obviously fail when it comes to where it really counts!_

And I almost vomited right then and there, to get that hateful bile out of my stomach. It was telling me things I so did not want to hear right now.

It was speaking vile awfulness, and what hurt all the more, is that it was speaking the truth.

And all I could do is swallow the poison as it spoke these poisonous words to me, and watch Rosalie writhe and rise to meet Edward's every touch, and know she was for him, because she knew from me that it wasn't me that would be for her.

And then she stopped, suddenly, and her eyes opened wide.

"Edward, no!" she commanded, her head shifting to look down, ... way down.

Edward apparently wasn't listening, because she said it again, more forcefully.

"Ed_wwward! NO!"_ she said.

And her hands flashed down to her crotch, protectively covering herself there, then she lifted one hand to chest-height and pushed, hard, against the air, against invisible Edward, on top of her.

She must have succeeded, because she looked like she was being pressed down into her bed, and now it looked like a weight was lifted from her entire body. Before she was ... compressed? And now she was lying flat on her back, unencumbered. She quickly flipped to her side, propping her head up with her hand, and at the same time pulling her shirt back down, recovering her breasts.

"Edward!" she scolded fiercely, "you really, really have to ..."

Her scolding died in her throat, and her mouth hung open, and she had this incredibly stupid expression on her face, her eyes as large as saucers.

_"Holy fuck!" _she whispered in an awed voice.

She stared openly at her Edward, her eyes level, that is: belt-height, and it looked like she could tear her eyes away from the object in question.

From Edward's ... thing.

She would glance up to Edward's face, but her eyes always seemed to be dragged back down South.

"Edward, you're fucking big!" she finally exclaimed.

Okay, Rosalie Hale at a loss for words because you whipped it out? What kind of ego-boost would that be? Edward must've been standing there, chest puffed out, proud as a peecock.

"Yeah, well, don't let it get to your head!" Rosalie tried to sound nonchalant at Edward who was probably crowing his stupid head off, but her weak attempt to appear casual about it all didn't even convince me.

It didn't convince him either, because Rosalie's eyes shifted, and her head tilted, ... following Edward as he closed on her. Her hand was covering her crotch, but then it was gently pushed away, and the top button of her denim jeans was undone. She put her hand back over herself, but you could see she was doing that just because she was supposed to, just because it was a matter of form that a girl was supposed to protect her virtue from the stupid evil beasts that all men are, but it was obvious there was no fight in her now. She was like a little bird now, entranced by a cobra before it strikes. And each time her hand moved to protect herself, it was pushed away without protest, and another button on her jeans was undone.

Until there were no more buttons left, and she scooted on the bed, and lifted up her back up a little, and scooted more, ... and her jeans were down around her knees. And it was Rosalie who kicked off her jeans; it wasn't Edward who took them off her.

And then she spread her legs open, for him, and I saw a little tuft of golden hair, and I saw her bare lips, longer than my tiny slit, puffier, fuller, so, so different than mine ... it looked somehow ... mature, and knowing, and wise, and kind ... not at all childish, like I felt mine to be. I had never seen hers in that way, and seeing it now, so freely offered, I had never seen anything more desirous nor beautiful until now.

And I saw a little bit of dew on her lips, sparkling in the sunlight, and the scent ... the scent of honeysuckle and rose was heavy in the air, overpowering and intoxicating.

And she was giving this — herself — to Edward.

And I don't know why, but a very tiny, sad _"No" _escaped my lips, and one then two tears fell from my eyes.

Rosalie didn't even hear me. She was looking right up at Edward, her real true love, and that's all she saw ... that's all that existed for her.

Edward was now her world, and with her look, she gave herself to him, and him only.

She bit her lip shyly, and turned her head to the side, and whispered something. "Edward, I have to tell you something, ..." then she looked ashamed, "... I'm not a virgin ... _OW!"_

The last she yelped in surprise, and in pain, and at the same time, I saw her vagina almost cave in for a second, then spring back, and I winced in sympathetic pain, like when in gym class one of the girls fell on the balance beam, between her legs, and she cried and cried and cried and had to be out of school for a long time after that.

_"Jesus fucking Christ, Edward!" _Rosalie shouted angrily. "You can't just ram that thing in there! I wasn't fucking ready, for God's sake! Ever hear of foreplay, you dumb ass?"

I hadn't heard of foreplay, either. I didn't even know what it meant. Did that make me a double dumb ass?

"Can you just take it easy on me with that goddamn tree truck? I don't have a fucking cave for a pussy, you know!" she complained.

I was of two minds. I wish I knew beforehand what all this meant, so I wouldn't be shell-shocked by it all, but now, _knowing_ exactly what she was saying? I kinda wish I still didn't know, because I really didn't know how to handle any of this, these feelings, so I just kind of tried to block it all and hope it would just go away.

But it didn't go away, my feelings that I couldn't handle, and the 'tree trunk' that Rosalie's 'pussy' couldn't, either.

Like Rosalie had told me, I didn't even know half before, and knowing half, I saw I didn't even know half of that.

"Okay, okay, okay," Rosalie whined desperately, and I saw her slit opening, then expanding, and then ... stretching.

"Easy, Edward, easy, easy," she pleaded, as I saw her being pressed down, and her pussy opening up, trying to accommodate him as he slid further and further ... _in._

And then, even as she was biting her lip and whining, she rolled her eyes and, dripping sarcasm, snidely remarked, "Yes, Edward, I kept myself nice and tight for you. You're welcome, you bastard."

I never thought I would hear somebody being called 'bastard' with affectionate tones.

And then she grunted an _'Unh!' _and bit her lip, and relaxed her head onto the bed and panted for a while.

"Oh, my God!" she gasped. "Oh, my fucking God!"

Then she chuckled a small laugh and said: "Thank you, Edward, I know you're in. I figured that out for myself."

I wondered what was supposed to happen next, because nothing seemed to be happening. Rosalie was just looking up at Edward, and I guess Edward was looking back at her. Was this what she was showing me? I didn't get it.

And then something did happened. She shifted a tiny little bit on her bed, and nodded her head.

"'Kay," she said quietly.

It must've been some signal, because she began being rocked on the bed. I saw her hips begin pulled up, and everything in her clenched, then she was thrust back down, hard, and when that happened, Rosalie gasped, as if she were punched in the stomach.

She lifted up her legs, wrapping them around Edward's and then the same with her arms, wrapping them around his back.

And the motions became more pronounced, and more forceful. Edward may have listened to her at first to take it easy, but now he wasn't. Rosalie asked me if I wanted it rough or gentle, and now I was seeing it rough. Rosalie's body was being pounded into the bed, over and over again, and at each thrust, she gasped and clenched her whole body.

But she said she would've liked it rough from Royce as a lover and a husband, and I saw this here, too. She was being ridden hard, and it didn't look like it was any fun at all to me, and I couldn't say she was having 'fun,' ...

... but it looked like she wanted this, that her whole body was responding to some primitive need, and that need was this.

Rosalie was being fucked so hard, she literally lost her grip. As Edward continued to pound, harder and harder, faster and faster, her arms fell off his back, and her legs fell open onto the bed. She couldn't do anything but be fucked, and her body just automatically responded, her own hips weakly meeting Edward's powerful thrusts.

And she turned her head to the side, facing me, just trying to take everything Edward gave, and her eyes opened, and she stared out blankly, mouth opened.

And I gasped in shock.

Her eyes were golden.

I hadn't ... her eyes were always black after she kidnapped me. I had seen her golden eyes in Ekalaka, burnished with red, but then she took me out here, and I had my period, and her eyes went black, and they never turned back to gold.

I guess I associated her eye color with the amount of pain she was in, the darker, the more empty her stomach. That worked, but that didn't make any sense, because she was always out hunting, like, nearly every day, when she said vampires only needed to go out once every ten days or so.

So, it was my proximity? Vampires hung out with each other, right? Not around humanity, because it made them hungry?

But that didn't make sense, either, because Hales, or the Cullens, were always around people, but it didn't matter to them. Their eyes were golden, like: all the time when I saw them.

Her eyes also got darker when she got angry.

So, here she is, being fucked by Edward, and looking right through me with her pure-gold eyes, but when she's with me, in this world, they're always black.

And I put two and two together.

She wanted to be with Edward, more than anything.

And as nice as she was to me on the outside, calling me equal and all that, on the inside her black-black eyes were telling her that everything I was was exactly what she didn't want.

And I shut my mouth as my tears fell, because ...

Because I now knew exactly what was going on here. She and Royce were engaged, but she said Edward had shown up and attended parties, and that they had 'conversed.'

Yeah. They were 'conversing,' all right.

She and Royce were going to get married, but here she had snuck Edward into her house, and they were ... _trysting._

And that's why when Carlisle found her on the road, almost dead, he brought her ... 'home.' Because that was really going to be her home. Edward probably told his parents that he had been meeting Rosalie at night, and they figured the rest out, as parents do, and left it alone, I guess, or gave him a parental lecture, but let this boy be a boy, but when she was nearly dead, no hope of being able to recover, they said, 'Well, now that she's here, and you two have been having your _rendezvous_ in private, well ...'

And the killer for me? Probably everything went fine, or more than 'fine' if this is what Edward wanted and what Rosalie needed — a good hard _fuck_ to keep her happy — but then they moved out here, and Edward saw me, and for some goddamn stupid reason forgot all about Rosalie and pursued me with a very clear message to her: "No longer interested in you, Miss Perfectly cold stuck-up bitch ... I like shy human girls."

Edward didn't originally reject Rosalie. Obviously. I mean, the proof is right in front of me: they're fucking away like nobody's business, right behind Royce's back ... who ... _knew?_ So he took it out on Rosalie? But here they were, then, a year ago, and then they came out West, and Edward dropped her like a hot potato the second he saw me.

Bella the home-wrecker.

Ouch.

I am a fucking cunt.

And I didn't even realize this until right this second.

Rosalie kidnapped me, not because I knew shit, or maybe that was the excuse, I don't know. But Rosalie kidnapped me because I stole her man, and all she could do is sit in bed and watch _him_ introduce _me_ to _her!_

And she even talks to me _why?_

Could I forgive someone if they stole everything I wanted in life? I mean, I'm not in Rosalie's place. I didn't have my life all perfectly planned out with a husband owning the bank, the estate and the kids all lined up in a row ... but if I did, and that was taken away from me? And then my fallback up and leaves me for this ... _kid _who doesn't know _shit_ about _shit, huh?_

How would I've taken it if I could just take her away and just get rid her with nobody knowing about it?

Would I have done that, even if nobody could stop me? I don't know. Me? No ... but if I were Rosalie, and lost everything, would I've killed me?

Would Rosalie've killed Royce?

Obvious answer: she did.

But here she had me in the exact same spot she had Royce, minus a two heavily armed security guards and a foot-thick bank vault door, and I did to her worse than Royce. Royce took away her old life, and that ended that night.

But I took away her new life, and that was forever.

And here she is, in her new life, reliving her last moments, right in front of me, with _her_ Edward, and I took that right away from her, and I had the _gall_ to ask her what her problem was when she spurned my offering of a basket of cornbread and biscuits.

Putting some jam in the basket didn't help all that much.

"Here, Rosalie," I said, all sweet innocence, "have some bread and jam instead of Edward, because he's with me now, so fuck off."

Did I mention what a scumbag I am? I don't know if I mentioned that.

And all I could do is watch Edward fuck her, fuck the _shit_ out of her, with her loving every moment of it, and watch what I took away from her.

But then, that is, back in the here and now, with Bella-the-scumbag watching Rosalie's happiness unfold, I saw Rosalie's blank golden-eyed stare refocus. Her eyebrows creased and then, instead of being thrust into the bed, she became still, and looked up at Edward, bringing her arms and legs around him, and then she pumped her hips a few times, but there was no force coming from him now, it was her, rocking against him.

"Yeah, you came really hard, Edward," she said, trying not to sound disappointed as she bit her lip.

She was unwrapped again from Edward, and she shook a little bit ... Edward hitting the bed beside her? And she just looked up at the sky, at her ceiling, and then, without a sound, mouthed a disappointed _'damn it!'_

She just lay there, staring up into nothing for a moment, and I just watched her, looking at her being quiet.

Then suddenly she propped herself up, looking toward the door.

"Edward," she said, "where are you going?"

Concern creased her brow.

Then: _"Now? WHY?"_

"O-okay," she said, trying to sound okay about something that seemed to just tear her apart. "But you have to leave right now? Can't you, just, stay a few more minutes?"

I don't know what Edward had to do and right now, but obvious it was more important than staying with the most beautiful and perfect woman in the world.

My hate for Edward rekindled. I was this close to staring a forest fire: I was _that _hot with anger.

"Alright, Edward, okay. Yo-you'll telephone me tomorrow, maybe? I mean ..."

It was heartbreaking watching Rosalie fall apart and pretend not to.

"Okay, Edward, I-I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay, Edward. Okay. ... 'bye."

And then she blinked, staring blankly, for a long, long time, and then, all alone again, rolled up into a ball on her bed, covered her head with her arm, and whispered, "'Bye, Edward."

I was crying freely now, so quietly, to leave Rosalie in her sadness, but the tears just kept falling. I _hated_ Edward. _I hated him!_ But I wanted to run down that little hill into the forest, find that bastard, and scream at him to turn around — _right fucking now! _— and get his head on straight and go back to the girl who heart was breaking _because of him!_ and drop whatever the hell he was pretending was so _goddamn_ important and get back to what really was, because he was so seriously blowing this.

_God!_ If I were Edward, I would've turned right back around and apologized to her for like twenty-seven hours and telephoned home and made whatever excuses I had to, but I would've _stayed with her!_

How could he miss this? How could he be so blatantly heartless?

Fuck it. Fuck. It.

I don't give a fuck about the 'safe side,' anymore. Consequences be damned! I don't care if I get lost forever in the ghost-world or whatever. I'm gonna cross over and _I'll_ stay with her, _I'll_ hold her if that _fucking bastard_ won't. I'm not Edward. I don't have a tree trunk. I can't rip off her clothes and throw her on the bed and treat her rough like how, apparently, she likes, but I'll at least _stay_ with her and not watch her fall apart like this.

I rose, determination clenching my jaw so tightly my teeth _ached, ... _and passed the cross, going to the dangerous side ... toward her.

* * *

**A/N**: Ouch. Tough chapter. geophf's analysis available at twilight-dad-dot-blogspot-dot-com /2012 /12 /msr-ch-63-show-or-tell .html; but, as always, please read my critique of criticism and analyses first at twilight-dad-dot-blogspot-dot-com /2012 /12 /on-criticism-and-analyses .html

We are now twelve chapters into one day of the girl's life, and she hasn't even made it back for a (late) lunch yet. She's brushed Rosalie's hair, learned signs, fought, asked questions, been violated, learn what her hope is, become an equal, and now this. How much more can she take before she ... breaks? And Rosalie just keeps pushing.

Uh, oh. As Rosalie says, there is, indeed, a storm coming.


	64. The Choice

**Chapter Summary:** She _missed it?_ After I had _Edward-fag-boi-Cullen _in me? Dis_gust_ing! So that means I have to do this ... _again?_ Well, she won't miss it this time, thank God! There's no way I'll do it a third time. No. Wait... She's backsliding now? Wonderful.

* * *

"Rosalie?" I said, as I reached toward her back tentatively.

Her whole body was shaking. _She was crying?_ I swear to God, if I ever see that Edward again, I'm gonna take a shotgun to his face. See how he likes buckshot acne, the bastard, and no, I'm _not_ saying that affectionately, either!

As I went to touch her back, to comfort her, she whipped around so fast the air sang in surprise.

"Whoa!" I shouted, and sat down, hard, into the snow.

"Did you see it?" she demanded. Her face was pinched with fury, as she glared at me with her pitch-black eyes.

"Uh, what?" I asked, shocked, because I'm all super-intelligent like that.

"Did you see the lie?" she demanded, intensity radiating from her entire being. She sat, no: she _perched_ on the log, like a raptor, ready to strike.

"Yes," I said, as I picked myself up and dusted off my heinder. I saw it, all right.

Her eyes narrowed.

Oh, no. Old Rosalie was back.

... not that she's _old person-_old, but you get what I mean.

"What did you see?" she demanded.

This time, I was ready for the interrogation. This time, I saw it.

"Edward," I said, "he told you he loved you, didn't he? Right? But he doesn't. He didn't. And he said he'd 'phone, but he's not gonna do that either! He left you, even after you beg-..." — _oops, Rosalie doesn't beg_ — "that is, even after you pleaded with him to stay, but he was like 'no, I'll see you tomorrow,' and he _won't, _the big liar, I saw it, alright!"

Rosalie stared at me open-mouthed.

Oops, not good. That wasn't the pleased-with-my-insight look.

_"That's_ what you saw?" Rosalie asked incredulously.

She looked at me expectantly, then prompted: "Was that all you saw?"

She kept staring at me. So after a moment, I said, "Um ..."

What did she want me to say? That I hated him? That he was a jerk? That ... oh ... I blushed.

"No, Rosalie," I said sadly, "I also saw ..."

Her eyebrows creased as she waited, then she said, "Yes ...?" hopefully.

There actually wasn't that much hope in her 'yes,' though.

I'll just have to blurt it out.

"Rosalie, I'm sorry, okay?" I said quickly. "When you said you and Edward didn't work out, I didn't know it was because of me. I'm sorry, okay? If I had known that you two were like ... _that, _when he came around I would've told him to ... to ... " — _to fuck off? _I could think that now, but to say that out loud? Just like Rosalie Hale from New York? No, I couldn't say that out loud — "... to go packing," I continued, helplessly, "and to go back to ... you know ... to you because ..."

Rosalie's face just kept getting more and more surprised and more and more grave. Suddenly she held up her hands.

"Stop, baby, stop, stop, please!" she commanded.

She looked so disappointed.

Then she put her head into her hands and blew out a long sigh.

"You missed it," she said quietly. "You missed it all, and I did all that and you ..."

I just watched as she collapsed onto her back on the bed ... I mean, on the tree trunk, her hands covering her eyes.

I looked down, ashamed and confused. What did I miss? I saw it so clearly: Edward was a jerk. What else did she want me to see? That I stole him away. What else was there to it? I had no idea. I was ashamed that I stole Edward from her, and now I'm ashamed that that wasn't what I was supposed to see.

"Are you..." I asked sadly. Then I cleared my throat and tried to speak a little louder so Rosalie could hear me, because she was just so lost in herself and so disappointed in me.

That's it: she's disappointed in me.

"Are you disappointed that you ... well, asked me to be an equal?" I said. "Do you regret that?"

Rosalie was silent for a while, her arm over her eyes, her naked bottom just ... spread out to me, I could see everything, but it wasn't sexual at all, it was a look of her complete and utter defeat at my hands, ... at the hands of my stupidity in missing everything.

She finally murmured, "Wow. One step forward, ten steps back. Next you'll be taking back your belief? And your hope, too?"

I shifted from foot to foot.

Rosalie suddenly sat up, propping herself up on her elbows, staring at me, hard.

I couldn't look at her.

"Do you take that back, too?" she demanded.

And then, harshly: "Well?"

I said to the ground, "I don't know what to say, Rosalie."

"Because the answer is 'yes'?" she demanded angrily.

I blushed.

"Baby?" she said softly.

"Rosalie," I said, "Because the answer is I don't deserve it. I don't deserve any of it. I see that now, okay? And ..."

"Wait," she interrupted, "Wait, wait, wait! You say the answer is you don't deserve it, because _who_ told you that?"

"Rosalie," I shrugged, "Nobody told me that, okay? But I see how it is, and I see what I did to you, okay? And I'm sorry, okay? So if you wanna take it back, then, okay. I understand." I said, my heart breaking. "I'm just not ... good enough ... is all."

My chin was trying very hard to stay still, and not quiver. It wasn't doing such a good job.

Rosalie regarded me, then shook her head, disappointment writ large on her face.

"Sweetie," she said softly, "I can't take it back. You have no idea how it is to be me, in this timeless time. Once I say something, it's there forever. I can't take back my offer of equality to you. I can't take back hearing you say I am your hope. I can't take back what I've done to you. I can only go forward. And I can regret saying something, or I can choose not to regret it. That's what I choose."

"What do you regret then?" I asked. She didn't look happy; she looked regretful.

She sighed. "I just wish ..." Then she seemed to change directions and blew out hard. "Baby, did you think I did all this to make you feel sorry? Is that what you think?"

I couldn't look into her critical eyes. I looked away and down, nodding my head.

She was quiet.

"You think I'd be that vicious to you? that cruel, just to make sport of you? that vindictive, just to get back at you?" she demanded.

Then: "You know," she said, hurt in her voice, "that's really a slap to the face: you thinking I just want to hurt you when I'm trying so hard, so hard it _hurts_ me to do this. You think I enjoyed any of that? I've had more fucking cock forced in me than what I'd want in _five_, no ... now with this fiasco, _six _lifetimes, but I did this for you to show you, if you got it, something that will give you a way to see the _whole fucking world_ like nobody else does, and you just ..."

I looked at her, and she really did look despondent, she was looking down at the tree trunk, talking to it, digging into it listlessly with her fingers.

"You just throw all that I'm trying to do right in my face saying I'm the kind of person who ... No: that I'm not a person at all, I'm a monster who hurts you just for fun?" She bit her lip.

"Is that how you see me?" she asked, looking at me, sad, angry, hurt.

"Rosalie," I said, agitated, "no! No, please, no! I didn't say any of that, and I didn't mean that at all! Look, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't know what you're were trying to do, okay? I just saw you and Edward, and you were, like, happy with him, sorta, that is, until he up and left you, so I thought that was what you were trying to show me, and ... maybe ... well, you were so angry back at Ekalaka, and Edward was calling on me, and I saw this and I thought, that ..." I shrugged helplessly. "I thought you were happy with him, kinda, and I ..."

I sighed hard.

"I guess I just screwed it up. I guess ..." I swallowed, looking down.

I come over here to comfort her, because I ruined her life, and I come to find that I screw even that up. I can't even comfort her without getting everything wrong.

"I guess I just screw everything up." I said quietly to the ground.

And I don't even know what she was trying to show me. I just know I missed it all.

"And that's how you see yourself: a screw-up?" Rosalie stated this so softly.

My lips twisted into a rictus.

"Remember how I asked you not to denigrate yourself?" she asked.

"Yeah," I laughed softly. "I even told myself that, and now look at me. I can't even do that right. I'm ..."

Fuck.

"I'm ... not up for this, Rosalie. I'm ..."

Oh, my God. I'm crying. Again. I come over to comfort her, because she's crying, and _I'm_ the one who's crying.

"Baby," Rosalie said.

I looked up over to her. She was patting the tree trunk right beside her, my seat.

"C'mon over here," she ordered kindly.

How can she be bossy and nice at the same time?

I kicked at the snow.

"'Kay," I pouted and dithered. "Can you ... can you put on your pants first?"

She smirked and pointed down to them by my feet. She did kinda kick them away from her. I bent down and picked them up and walked over to her, giving her her jeans.

They were a little wet and stained by her crotch, and they smelled so strongly of her scent: sweet, floral, heavenly.

She took them and slipped them on, buttoning her fly in quick, economical movements and smiled up at me.

I sunk down beside her, looking at the snow, waiting for the gentle lecture about what a failure I was.

Would she send me to bed without supper ... or even lunch, I guess?

She put her arm around my shoulder.

"Hey," she said, gently.

Yeah. The gentle scold. Sometimes I think the gentle scold hurts more than her anger and shouting. Not that I preferred that. I kinda wished for neither, but then I'd have to be a person who didn't need neither, and I guess I just didn't measure up, and that's why I was here, being scolded.

"Hey," I said dejectedly.

"So," she said, all mature, "just so you know that I know: you're not on the safe side anymore. You came across, even though I told you not to, right?"

"Yeah," I sighed. Whee. Broke another rule. Joy.

"And just so you know, that was really, really stupid, you know that?" she asked gently.

"You don't go near a vampire when it's feeding, and you don't go near one when it's fucking," she explained. "It's like automatic: you go near one doing that, they attack, you die. That's it. A vampire so reduced to their most primitive state is worse than an animal gone rabid, and it attacks and kills anything that comes near it. And you just walked right over here. When I _said_ safe side, I _meant_ safe side, and you just threw that out the window and marched right over here, didn't you? You do know you were throwing your life away, didn't you? Or did you know that?"

"Rosalie, I don't know," I said, sighing heavily. "And I didn't care. You were hurting, and ... you were so alone, and if that fucking Edward wasn't gonna do anything about it, then I was, 'cause I could, even if I'm not all ... all that to you, at least I coulda ... coulda been with you, you know?"

"My, my!" she exclaimed. "'That _fucking_ Edward,' hm? Such language. Tut-tut!" she tsked.

Suddenly I felt very shy.

"And then there's that little girl's voice saying 'no!' when I opened myself up to him ... hm. Is somebody jealous?" her voice was silky and sly.

My face burned like a brand, and I couldn't look at her.

She continued: "And then that little girl comes over to comfort me after 'that fucking Edward' runs off." Then her voice turned serious: "Baby, so I was hurting, you come over here. Didn't you consider I might just turn and take my hurt out on you?"

I shrugged against her arm. "I didn't care," I said quietly. "I thought ... I knew anything could happen to me, and I didn't care. You were hurting, that's what I cared about."

Rosalie squeezed my arm.

"I know, baby. I saw."

Then Rosalie said: "Thank you."

I looked down at the snow and snuffled.

"Baby?" Rosalie said eventually.

"Yeah?" I said after I wiped my eyes.

"I have a question, and I want you give me your honest answer, okay?"

"Okay," I said.

"You said you're not up for this, us being equals?"

I nodded, and added: "I'm not. I'm sorry, Rosalie. It ... sounded good, but I guess I'm ..."

"Shhh!" she whispered. "Sh-sh-sh."

I guess I'm back to being shushed. I sighed.

After a pause, she asked quietly: "... yet you're willing to throw your life away to rescue me, the poor damsel in distress?"

She asked this so seriously.

I shrugged. "Rosalie, you should have seen yourself. Anyone who had a heart would've done the same thing."

"But it wasn't anyone, was it?" she asked, then answered herself: "It was you."

I bit my lip.

"Okay," she said. "Maybe I was wrong, and maybe you're not ready. Or at least this is your feeling on the matter. I'm not going to take back anything I said. I can't. I won't. But you can. If you're not ready to be my equal, meet me measure, for measure, then you, little human, can back away from what you accepted earlier."

I heaved a sigh of relief. "I think that's best, Rosalie. I... I'm just not up for it."

"Ah, ah, ah!" she scolded. "Not so fast! Hear me out first before you jump into or out of something of which you only have vague notions."

"Why?" I asked. I mean, seriously: why bother? I'm so not up to being Rosalie's equal, obviously. So what's the point of an explanation?

"Sweetheart," Rosalie responded gently, "you're making a choice here, and either way has serious consequences, so let me tell you what you're committing to before you choose, so you can make an informed choice because this will guide your life for quite some time."

She paused thoughtfully. "I thrust this rôle of equality on you, just expecting you to accepted it, and you did, blindly. But now you see the ramifications, and they are not trivial. I'm giving you a choice now, and I want you to be the one to choose. Not me. And I want you to make the choice knowing what you're choosing, okay?"

"Okay ..." I said cautiously.

Didn't I just say this was all too hard, and now she's offering me a hard choice, instead of giving me an out from all the hardness?

My thought to complain was muted, however. She had her arm around me, and that somehow made everything better, or at least more bearable. And although no tears actually fell from her eyes, she wasn't crying anymore, and that made me feel a lot better, knowing that she knew that's what I came over here for.

"Okay," she said. "So, if you choose that you cannot be my equal, then that is how I will treat you, do you understand me?"

"Yeah," I said, "I guess I do."

"Let me be clear," she said bluntly, "you'd be forfeiting your rights as an independent person: I'd dictate the schedule, I'd tell you what you can read and what you cannot, I'd prepare you're meals, which you'd have to eat, by the way, no more of this skipping meals. I'd determine which hour you go to sleep, put you to bed, and then in the morning tell you when you'd have to have to get up."

I puzzled over that. "Rosalie," I said, "that's exactly how it's been up to now."

"Yes," she said, coolly, "and you'll go right back to that."

I couldn't read her at all.

"Okay ..." I said. I didn't see anything wrong with that.

"So," she said. "You will go back to being a child, and I will be your mother."

I gasped. "Holy shit!"

I pushed her arm off me. She let it fall. I stood up and faced her.

She was glaring at me angrily.

I glared right back, fuming.

"Rosalie," I said, "I'm _not_ a child!"

"Oh, really?" she crossed her arms, not giving an inch.

"Yes, really!" I shouted.

"Then you tell me," she countered fiercely. "What age would you put a person who can't dress herself, who can't go to the potty without supervision, who can't feed herself, who can't bathe herself, who when asked to do simple things — such as learning signs, or writing an essay, or stand in front of a mirror, such simple things! — throws a tantrum and has to be forced to do these things that she knows are good for her?"

She ticked off each thing as she said them with her fingers, coldly glaring at me as she did so.

I felt the blood draining from my face as she mercilessly hammered home each point, proving what a baby I was.

And I noticed she didn't even _touch_ on me crying all the time.

She could have been mean about it, but she was just factual, and she knew that by just being factual that she had so much proof there was nothing I could say in my defense.

"I'm not a child, Rosalie," I mumbled, kicking at the snow.

_"I'm not a child, Rosalie," _she whined right back, repeating my words and exactly how I said them, showing me what a baby sounds like.

Then she asked again, harshly: "What age?"

I blushed. "S-seven, I-I guess."

She snorted. "Yes, 'seven' if you're pushing it, but, okay: seven. So you will be a seven year old girl, and I will be your mother, and that's what you choose to go right back to, if you cannot handle being my equal."

I just stared at her. Was she serious? She couldn't be serious.

"What?" I demanded, "will I have to call you 'mommy,' too?"

She waved carelessly. "You may, if you wish. Whether you do or you don't, it will not change the nature of the relationship."

She was serious.

I shook my head. "Why are we even having this conversation?"

She leaned forward, interlacing her fingers into tightly clasped hands. "Listen to me. Your life is at a juncture, right here, and right now, and I am giving you the choice as to which way it goes, and whatever you choose, I will honor your choice."

"But why, Rosalie?" I said. "Why even ask? I mean, I see no downside to this."

She tilted her head to one side, looking at me quizzically. "You see no downside?" she asked in confusion.

"Yeah," I said. "You get exactly what you always wanted. You get to be a mommy, and you get a little girl you can dress up and boss around and ..."

My throat was tight. "So, why even ask? You're holding all the cards; you can do whatever you want."

"Ah," she said. "You're looking at it from my perspective."

I wondered what she meant. "How else would I look at this as?"

"Well, it is your choice, sweetheart," she said gently. "You could try looking at it from yours."

"What could I possibly get out of that?" I demanded as I waved angrily toward her and her 'choice.'

"You get everything you want, and you won't have to confront the things you've just said you cannot handle: you won't be burdened with making hard choices, as that responsibility is mine as the parent. You'll be served meals, be provided clean clothes, you'll be entertained with the books you like to read. I'll even read you bedtime stories, and not even scary ones at that, and tuck you into bed, just as you have begged me to do. I will do that for you, gladly. I will keep you safe and warm, just as I have been doing up to now, which is much more than most people in this country can aspire to. You will be my child. And I will love you."

I gasped in shock.

"... I will love you _as_ my child, that is." She added quickly, looking away.

Okay. Where do I sign up?

"But," she resumed menacingly. "This," she waved up and down toward me, "rebellion to everything I do for you and demand of you? That has to stop. As a child, you yield your responsibilities as an adult, you also give up your rights. What I say, goes, and you have to go along with it, or else there will be consequences. A child has no discipline, intrinsically, so I will provide it, and you must obey."

"'Consequences'?" I ask fearfully, not believing this turn.

"Yes," she glared at me. "Do you remember telling your mother 'No!' when she told you do something? Do you remember how she took that? What did she do?"

My mouth was dry.

"I actually, ..." I whispered and cleared my throat, "I don't remember ... it's been ... a long time ..."

"Let me help you there," she scowled. "You say 'holy shit' like you just did? What do you think me, as a mother to my seven year old daughter, would do if I heard you say that?"

I blushed. "Uh ..."

She glared.

"Uh, you wouldn't be ... happy?" I ventured.

Her eyes narrowed to slits. "That's putting it mildly," she hissed, then coldly laid it out: "I'll spell it out for you again. You give me attitude, or back talk like that, if you can't handle this equality-shit? You say something like that? I will wash your mouth out with soap and water, then you'll be over my knee until you learn in your very being what's acceptable and what's not, and then you'll be grounded until I've gotten my cool back, which may be a day or may be much longer than that: no reading, extra chores, and I'm talking hard labor with even more consequences for a half-assed job, the whole works. This is no joke."

I shuddered in place. "Wait. You're going to spank me?" I squeaked.

Her cold stare was all I got.

"Rosalie," I said, as reasonably as I could. "You _can't _do that."

"I can't to my equal, no," she said. "But you back away and be a little girl? Fine. You be good, no problem. But you try me ...?"

She glared at me again. "Better yet," she added. "Don't try me. You won't like it."

"But, Rosalie," I complained, "you just said _'shit'_ when you were saying I can't say that. And then you'll turn around and spank me for that? That's not fair!"

_"That's not fair!" _she whined again, perfectly imitating me, then snorted and bore down, snarling: "Spoken like a true seven year old. Well done, you're falling right into your new rôle perfectly."

"Well," she added harshly, "here's something you may not know: _life_ isn't fair. I also happened to have smoked when I was human, and, hm, I was fucked by five neanderthals at once. That was _so fun." _She rolled her eyes angrily. "But swearing, smoking, and fucking are not something that any parent would countenance from their child, even though they, themselves do just that regularly. Deal with it. Because you do any of that as my child that you now choose to be and _mommy-Rosalie_ will so ..."

Pure fury was writ on her face and she balled her hand into a fist, punching her open hand with a thunderclap that shocked the air around her.

"Uh," I said stupidly. "You smoked?"

You weren't supposed to do that. Only loose women smoked.

She glared. "Drank, too. I wasn't one of the poor, superstitious lower-class immigrant workers just off the boat without papers coming as far as Rochester when they couldn't find work in the 'Foreigners Need Not Apply' city. We hired those for a dime an hour. We were even kind employers: giving them their meals and providing a roof over their heads in our servants quarters, instead of letting them starve and sleep on the streets."

Then she, the ultra-rich upper class goddess, glared at me, the poor, not-quite-off-the-boat German girl.

"Okay," I said, wincing. "Ouch."

She shrugged. "They were thankful for the employment. They knew their place." She added dismissively.

Okay, _really_ ouch_._

"Why do you wince?" she demanded. "You want this, then you have to know what you're getting into. Those people knew their place. You have to know yours. I'm doing something nobody does for anybody. I am spelling exactly what you are getting into. If you choose that you can't handle being an adult, then you will be treated as a child. And you have it clearly spelled out, the good, the bad ... everything."

I shuddered. "It's just ..." I couldn't believe this was a real conversation. "It's just I ..."

"It's just that you can't handle being an adult." She shrugged. "Well, you now know what it is to be a child ... _my_ child. You choose one or the other."

"But, Rosalie ..." I complained.

_"But, Rosalie ..." _she mimicked.

Okay, that's really annoying. I had had enough.

"Rosalie," I snapped, "stop it. Stop that right now."

She snorted. "Why? If you're going to be a child ..."

"Rosalie," I cut in, "a parent doesn't do that to her child. You simply _can't_ disrespect me like that, no matter who I am nor who you think I am. It hurts. And you have responsibilities. You can't just walk all over me because, um, you can..."

Oh, shoot! That was a kinda weak finish. And I thought I had something going with her being so mean about all this.

She paused. "You're right," she admitted. "I _will_ have responsibilities. You see me as cruel, hard? I am. But before you saw it as what I was getting? You missed everything I will be losing, and how hard it will be for and on me."

"Rosalie," I said, "you're going to have everything go your way in ..." I waved helplessly "... _that._ How is that hard for you?"

"Your mother had friends?" she asked.

Oh, that again. Why does she have to rub it in my face that I'm a loser and everybody else isn't?

I kicked at the snow and shrugged.

"Did she? I'm asking a question." Rosalie said.

I sighed, and thought back through the fog of years.

It was hard. But I saw me, ... little tiny seven-year-old-me and there was Ma, and she was at the kitchen table. I couldn't see her face anymore, but she was with a friend, and they were playing cards and laughing with each other.

And shooing me away, ... they wanted their girlfriends time without a little girl getting in their hair.

"Yeah," I said sadly.

"Yeah," she responded, just as sadly, but not spitefully imitating me this time. "She had friends, so she could talk with them, and get adult conversation, and support, dealing with raising a child, which takes every ounce of strength that a woman has. Let me ask you a question: who can I talk to when it gets hard for me?"

I looked into her sad, sad eyes.

"I can't talk to you as an adult, as a friend," she continued, "as you've ceded that. Besides, a child can't take on the burden of her parents. I can't unload you my adult problems because that will only hurt you more, because what can you do about it, except blame yourself, which will only hurt me more when I see you do that. So I have to look after you, care for you, and then what? Shall I escape to the forest when you're fast asleep and talk to the _fucking trees for God's sake_ when I despair that I've totally fucked up everything I've tried to do? That I've so entirely failed you that they ... what? Have to dig a new circle in hell just for me?"

"I-..." I gasped. "I ... didn't see it that way."

"And why would you?" she said. "All you have to be is a good girl. It's all on me from there, because you can't handle this."

She shrugged and kicked at the snow herself, looking despondent.

"I-I'm sorry, Rosalie." I said.

Her face twisted into a pained grin. "That's not even half of it, because when does it end?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"When's your birthday?" she asked right back.

Huh? Did she want to get me a cake?

"Um, September 13th?" I didn't see where this was going.

She nodded. "So in half a year I get to decide whether to put seven or eight candles on your cake, because you acted like you were six and a half, and not seven? Or do take on the mantle of adulthood then?"

"Uh ..." I said.

"When does it end for me?" she asked. "Do you see my predicament? A little girl doesn't go up to her mommy and say, 'I'm all grown up now! I can say _that fucking Edward_ and put on my own panties, so gimme the car keys now, huh?' Right? You ever tell your parents you were all grown up? How did that go over?"

I blushed and shrugged.

She nodded. "Let me guess. It didn't go over well."

I remember telling Pa I was quitting school. I remember his face when I said that. I remember going back to school the next day.

"Yeah," I admitted. "It didn't go over well at all."

"Exactly," she said. "Once you commit to this course, you can't just say, _'ha-ha, Rosalie, I was just kidding about not being able to handle it, I'm good now, so you can lay off the bitchy-mommy shit.' _Because that proclamation will just so win me over, won't it? It's the parent that determines the child's maturity."

"So," I said slowly, "you're calling all the shots."

The 'no duh' look from Rosalie wasn't kind.

"But then," she continued sadly, "I say, yup, you're all grown up now, and we're equals, and voilà, I thrust adulthood on you, instead of you taking it, because as a child you're not allowed to, and then you feel the load I place on you. We're right back here, in this lovely little conversation that is just so much fun for me."

The pained expression on her face didn't scream the 'fun' she claimed she was having.

"But, Rosalie ..." I said, and I waited for her to belittle me.

She didn't. She just waited.

"... I mean, okay, ... _ick._ But ..."

Then I shrugged. "I mean, so you give me this equals thing. And the first thing I do with it is fall flat on my face, and make you _cry on a fucking log, _because I just so don't see what I'm supposed to, and when I come over here, I do even that wrong, because that's so, so stupid of me!"

"... and brave." she added.

"So, stupid-brave," I said. "Do you see what I mean? You give me equals, and I don't know what it is, and I can't handle it."

"Would you like me to spell it out for you?" she asked reasonably. "It is the other option of your choice, so you should know what you're getting into, should you choose it."

"Yes, please!" I breathed out.

She smiled at me.

I looked back. Then smiled shyly at her, waiting.

Nothing happened.

"Uh, ... Rosalie?" I said. "You're going to explain to me the choice?"

Her smiled widened. "I just did."

"Um ..." I said helplessly.

She snickered.

"So," she said businesslike. "How can I explain what being an adult and being with an adult is like, when you're an adult already, hm? It's like me explaining to you the metabolic processes and expect you to breathe, and your heart to beat from that explanation, right? That's ridiculous!"

"Oh," I said, deflated. "It's just that, you spent about a billion years telling me what it is to be your kid, so I thought you'd give equal footing to being your adult ... um ..." and then I blushed, "... I mean, _an_ adult."

"See?" she said, smiling. "You're not _my_ adult; you're _an_ adult. And the only one who can tell you how to be you is you. But I'll give you an idea of what it's like, okay?"

"Okay," I said. "It'd better not be another silent treatment, though!" and I glared at her.

She laughed easily.

"Okay," she agreed. "It's like this: you don't know what it's like, and you fail, and you see me hurting, and you try to comfort me, and you get that wrong."

"Uh, Rosalie," I said, confused. "That's just what happened."

"Exactly," she said smiling widely. "That's what it is to be an adult. You try, and you fail, and you try again, and sometimes, ... _oftentimes ..._ you get that wrong, too."

Then she looked at me significantly. "Can you handle that?"

My face burned.

"It's just that ..." I said. "It's hard, okay, Rosalie? And you said everything's hard, but sometimes I don't think I can do it ... whatever 'it' is!"

"Can you ask for help?" she asked.

"Yeah ..." I said shyly.

"It's not weak of you to ask for help, you know," she said. "It actually shows that you're strong enough to ask. It shows you're mature enough to allow other people into your life and help, instead of being a little girl and saying _'Look, mommy, I can do this all by myself!'"_

I was blushing really hard now, because that's exactly what I thought I had to do to impress Rosalie. I thought I had to do it all myself, to show that I could handle being equal to her.

"Oh," I said weakly.

She rose fluidly, and I looked at her, cautiously.

"Are you ready to choose?" she asked.

I sighed. "I really don't have a choice, do I?"

"Yes, you do." she said firmly. "Your choice is you. It always is. If you aren't an adult, and can't handle the responsibility, then there is no shame in saying that, and in saying that you need an adult to be your parent and guardian. I will do that for you, for as long as it takes, for as long as you need it, even if that's for as long as you shall live. And there's no shame in choosing to be an adult, given that you are one, knowing that you will try, and you will fail, and that you don't need to do it all on your own."

"There's no shame here, sweetheart," she said so gravely. "Just your choice."

"But that's the thing!" I said. "I have to be an adult to choose to know I can't handle being an adult, and I have to be an adult to choose to be an adult. I can't be a kid and say 'I wanna be all grown up!' I can't say that and you take me seriously. You said that to me already! So I have to choose, and I look stupid either way, 'cause I _hafta_ choose to be grown up, but then why did I back out in the first place, huh? Do you see?"

She shrugged. "Good insight," she said easily. "But you're over-thinking it. Just let go, choose, and be happy with your choice."

I sighed. "Okay, Rosalie, I choose to be an adult."

I was just so embarrassed. 'Yeah, I'm not a kid anymore.' How stupid did I look, huh? Besides really stupid.

"Are you ashamed of your choice?" she demanded.

I blushed. "No, Rosalie, I'm not ashamed ..." then I amended. "... I'm trying not to be."

"Good," she said crisply. "Then tell me your choice to my face this time, like an adult, talking to an adult."

I gurgled a laugh.

She just never let anything go, did she?

I squared my shoulders, lifted up my eyes, and looked her dead in hers. "I'm an adult, Rosalie. I choose this."

Rosalie looked at me quietly for a moment, then she bit her lip.

She looked shy. She looked proud.

Then she looked back to me. "Please don't you backslide again, hm?"

"Okay," I said, "I'll really, really ... okay, I'll really try, okay, Rosalie?"

She smiled. "... and you'll fail, and you'll try again, and it's okay, okay?"

"Okay, ... and you'll help, too, huh?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, still smiling. "And I'll fail at that, because I'll get angry at you for failing, because I'm an adult, too, so I'll try, and I'll fail, and try again, okay? I'm in this, too, you know."

Thinking of Rosalie in anyway failing was just so odd for me, but I said a quiet "Okay," and offered a small smile.

She smiled back to me. "Would you like a hug?" she asked gently.

God, I would love a hug! but ...

"... it's not ... I mean," I said hesitantly, "it's okay? It's not childish to want a hug?"

Rosalie's face collapsed as she looked at me.

She sat down, heavily, on the log and waved at me, angrily.

"See?" she demanded. "That! That right there. You're in your head again. You're in your fucking head, and I offer ... _God!_ and you slap me right in the face."

"Rosalie, ..." I said quickly.

"You know what I wish?" she snapped back. "I wish, just for two fucking seconds you'd get out of your fucking head. I asked a simple fucking question. Hug? or no hug. Yes, or no. That's all you needed to say, but then you listen to your fucking voice and you fucking ..."

Her head sank into her hands.

"Rosalie, I'm ..." I pleaded.

Her sad voice wafted over to me, cutting me off. "You were in your fucking head the whole fucking time I was trying to show you the God damned lie that runs everything, to show you what the hell is going on in your fucking life, in mine, in everybody's, and I felt it the whole fucking time. Do you know how fucking hard it is to try to show you something and know you're just missing it all because you're not present to what's happening? Do you?"

She lifted up her head, looked at me, and looked away. "It was just a God-fucking-damn question. 'Do you want a hug?' What is so fucking hard about saying 'yes' or 'no'? But no, you have to analyze it and accuse me as trying to invalidate your choice which I asked _you_ to honor. I mean, seriously, do you see how carelessly you hurt people?"

She looked back at me. "How easily you hurt _me_? Do you?"

My throat was working, and I was trying really, really hard not to cry. "Yes," I said simply. "I'm sorry."

"No," she said, furious now. "No, if you did see how easily you hurt me, you wouldn't do it, and you wouldn't be sorry, you just wouldn't do it. But there you fucking go, and look for ways to sabotage every kindness offered."

Okay, the holding back the tears wasn't working.

"Rosalie," I breathed out, "I-I'm grateful. I say you're kind, and I'm grateful."

"No," she said. "You say I'm kind for this or I'm kind for that. You don't say what's there; you always add or take away, and both hurt, okay? Both hurt me."

I nodded, helplessly.

And then I tried again. "D-do you want a hug?"

She glared at me.

If her glare could burn, I would've been a cinder.

"Yes," she said coldly.

"Good," I gulped. "'cause I do, too."

She just glared at me, and then stood, radiating anger.

I waited for her to come to me to give me a hug, but she didn't move.

Oh. I offered her the hug this time. I started toward her.

Her hand whipped out, and I flinched.

She was pointing at the cross.

"Safe side," she barked. "You come to me here, and there's no guarantees of what I'll do, do you understand me?"

I looked her, standing so ramrod straight, one yard from me, glaring, furious. I knew what she could do to me. She knew I knew.

I chose.

I walked up to her, and I wrapped her in my arms.

Her arms — the arm that whipped out in anger a second ago — gently wrapped itself around me, and then her other arm did too.

And she crushed me into her, gently, firmly. And she held me into her.

And she didn't let me go.

* * *

**A/N: **Magigong Bagong Taon! Happy New Year from the Philippines. I'll be on a plane all day tomorrow flying to the U.S.A. so I won't be able to respond for a day or two, with the deplaning, unpacking, and jet-lagging.


	65. A Little Too Hot

**Chapter Summary: **When Rosalie holds me against her body like that... Okay, so like she's cold, right? And you know when you have something really cold against your tummy for a while ... Wait, I didn't mean she's _cold!_ I mean: she is hot. I mean... um, my cheeks are burning, aren't they? Can you not look at me, please?

* * *

She held me in her hug, in her strong, powerful arms, strong enough to rip a tree out of the ground, yet gentle enough to hold a slip of a girl without crushing her.

And I, a slip of a girl, held her back.

And time ... stopped. It stopped for her, she didn't move, she didn't breathe, she just held me. She was so furious just a second ago, or a minute ago, or was it an hour ago?

Because now she wasn't anything. Time stopped for her, and for me?

My world was just this, just me holding her and her holding me.

It wasn't as if she could be described as clingy at all. She wasn't a weak person.

But she said she wanted a hug, and I got the feeling that ...

That if she weren't holding me right now, there would be nothing for her to hold onto.

She was the strong one, and so forceful, so _hurtful_ sometimes, but she wasn't clingy.

But she held onto me.

From the well of her infinite strength, ... she clung to me.

And for her, time stopped.

But the wheels keep on turning, don't they?

I hate that about myself sometimes. I think and think and think. Even when I try not to. It gets me in trouble all the time, like when I found out about the Cullens. I got an idea in my head, and instead of being like everybody else and everywhere else in the the world, and this according to Rosalie, ... instead of being like them and just letting the idea go: _Huh, they're different._

Instead of just letting it go at that, I thought and thought and thought, and dug until I got my answers. And then I knew.

And when I knew, I just had to go to Rosalie and let _her_ know that _I_ knew.

I just couldn't be like everybody else, and let it go. No, I couldn't be like them and not care, and get on with my own life and my own business.

My own pointless life and my own pointless business.

No, I had to go to Rosalie and show her how _clever_ I was.

I can just see myself from her perspective now, clever little me, riding up to her house. How conceited!

I'm actually shocked she just didn't ... what? snap her fingers and make me disappear from the face of the Earth right then and there.

But she didn't.

And now she's holding me.

But now, another damn nagging thought is in my head again, and instead of me just holding her back and enjoying this moment, _forever,_ just her and me, that thought keeps nibbling away at my brain, an itch that needs to be scratched.

I sighed and dropped my arms from her back.

She didn't follow suit.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

She didn't let me go. She didn't move.

"Rosalie?" I whispered quietly in her ear.

Had she gone?

"Yes?" she answered just as quietly, not moving, her chin on my shoulder, my face resting on her collarbone, buried in her golden, downy hair.

I breathed her in.

"Did you..." I hesitated. "Did you want to ...?"

"No," she answered simply, interrupting my hesitant question.

I understood. She didn't 'want to' anything.

I returned my arms to her back, rejoining her in the hug.

...

"Rosalie?" I asked again, quietly.

She sighed.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly, blushing. "But I think I have to go again."

I waited, held in her arms, now rather embarrassed.

Strike that: now _very_ embarrassed.

Rosalie held me, soaking in what I said.

Then she chuckled. I felt it rumbling through her body, she was her laughter.

And she was laughing at _me_.

"Oh, to be human again and need to pee all the time," she quipped in amused tones.

_"Jeez! Rosalie!" _I whined. "I'm dying here!"

She broke the hug, holding me by my shoulders at arms length and regarded me. Laughter danced in her eyes.

"Didn't you just come from the outhouse?" she asked incredulously.

My face was beet-red.

"Yeah," I said, "but I ..."

Her tongue actually came out and touched her lower lip as she waited for my explanation. And I saw her pressing her lips together, around her tongue, trying to repress her smile.

She wasn't doing a good job at all of trying to look serious.

"Well," I nearly shouted in a huff, "it's cold out, and, you know, a girl gets thrown around and pounced on, and then, okay, the hug was nice, but you're not exactly the hottest person in the world, you know?"

She tilted her head to the side at the last bit.

"You don't think I'm hot?" she asked with a tone I couldn't decipher.

I looked back at her in confusion. "No," I answered simply, "you're, like, really cold, Rosalie, ... like ice, and you were kinda ..." I paused, looking at her looking at me so gravely, but her eyes mocking and amused. I pressed on: "... you were kinda pressing against my front, and the ... you know ... cold made me..."

I couldn't understand her look at all.

"made-me-kinda-need-to-pee-right-now-is-all."

I finished in a rush, blushing harder.

Her tongue disappeared from her lips which twisted into a frowny-grin, so pleased with something, with my weak human frailty, I supposed, which only embarrassed me further.

But she answered evenly: "Okay, let's go."

We started walking back to where we came from. But Rosalie didn't seem to mind. If anything, she was amused at silly, little me.

But her smirking air of superiority was eating away at me.

"Okay," I folded, "what's so funny?"

I heard her chuckle lightly.

"You do know that describing a person as 'hot' or 'cold' is euphemistic, don't you?"

I turned to look at her, and she looked back at me, examining me closely.

She shook her head in disbelief, smiling lightly.

"I don't know about that, Rosalie," I admitted. "You're just not hot: you're cold, that's all I said ..."

I paused, wondering if I were insulting her.

"I mean, you can't help it." Here she laughed again, so I added quickly, "... not that I mind, I guess I'm used to it."

I wonder if I were ever in contact with somebody else, I mean, like: another living, breathing human being, would I find them hot? burningly so now that I was so used to how Rosalie felt when she held me?

Not that that would ever happen, but if somebody else held me like Rosalie did, would I find it unbearably hot now? or disgusting? Like people wouldn't smell like flowers like her, they would smell like, ... well: people. Would I find them gross and stinky now?

I mean, if Rosalie didn't kill them first in a fit of jealous rage.

Or was that wistful thinking on my part?

"'I can't help it'?" she asked lightly.

I looked at her, wondering what she was hinting at. Finally I shrugged. "Yeah, I mean, I guess, right?"

She stopped. She just stood there, stock still, regarding me evenly.

"What?" I asked.

"You are just so innocent!" she finally sighed.

I blushed and looked away. _'Innocent'_ sounded a lot like _'dumb'_ to me, and I felt embarrassed, and I didn't know why.

I could feel her smile and her eyes on me.

"What?" I whispered petulantly.

"May I tell you want 'hot' and 'cold' imply when they are used to describe a girl?" she asked.

"They are used to describe girls?" I asked, turning back to her.

"Yes," she said, smirking, then she explained. "When someone is described as 'hot,' it means they are desirable."

"Oh," I said. Then: "Oh, I didn't mean that you were ..."

"... in a sexual way." She finished.

"What?" I asked, surprised by this sudden turn.

"Yes," she said. "'She's hot!' is what guys say to each other when they find a girl sexually desireable, usually with the implication that they would like to fuck them."

_"What?"_ I gasped, blushing again.

"So," she continued, her eyes dancing. "That same girl is describe as 'cold' or an 'Ice Queen,' or 'frigid,' when she doesn't respond to their sexual overtures. Like this: 'Goddamn it, that Rosalie turned me down, that bitch is cold!' implying that there's something wrong with the girl not wanting to sleep with the neanderthal with the manners of a lout."

She smirked at me. "Calling a girl cold means she's sexually repressed or dysfunctional and therefore undesirable."

"Oh," I said, my face stinging. "But you know I didn't mean that, right, Rosalie?" I asked quickly, trying to recover. "I mean, everybody knows you're ... um ... you're ..."

Okay, what was I going to say now? That she's _sexually desirable?_

"Yes?" she gave me a big, innocent-eyed look, almost simpering.

"Ah... um ..." I stuttered, then suddenly felt hot under my scarf. "Is it getting warmer outside?" I asked helplessly.

"What?" she ask, snickering. "Are you feeling ... _hot?"_

"Yes," I answered quickly, then just as quickly realized her innuendo, and my mistake of walking right into it.

She laughed openly, not waiting even a beat to cash in on my mistake. "Because that cheeky blush you're sporting, you surely _are _hot, you sexy thing!"

"Ahhhhh!" I squealed, and my mittened hands covered my cheeks.

The mittens felt icy, or maybe my cheeks were burning up.

She snickered again.

"I could just die," I exclaimed in embarrassment.

"Oh," she responded lightly now, no trace of her earlier fury by the fallen tree. "I'm sure you'll be just fine after you relieve your bladder." Then she tugged on my sleeve, ordering easily: "Come along."

I harrumphed and then trudged beside her, muttering to myself.

"What is it?" she asked after a moment of my sullen silence.

"Is everything a sexual thing to you?" I demanded.

"Oh, and why do you ask, you self-righteous little thing?" she returned glibly.

I scowled and blushed.

"It's just that it seems to me everything I say you're turning into a sexual thing now," I complained. "Are you doing that on purpose because you like seeing me embarrassed or something?"

"'Or something'? 'Or something' like what?" she asked.

Professor Rosalie and her exactitude.

"Okay," I groused, "or just embarrass me, is all."

We walked along in silence. I saw her reflecting on her thoughts.

Eventually she said: "I find your naïveté endearing, but I don't see why you would be embarrassed that your words often have a double-meaning with a sexual innuendo. Things of a sexual nature are often referred to in a circumlocutory manner, as to be blunt here in a social setting is considered gauche."

"But I'm not double-meaning anything," I responded quickly. "All I said was you were hot, I didn't mean anything sexual by it!" I responded hotly.

I mean 'hotly' but not in a sexual manner, if you take my meaning, and you darn well better as this was embarrassing enough for me as it is.

_Gosh!_ I can't even think a thought without getting embarrassed!

Rosalie stopped again and regarded me levelly.

"What?" I demanded.

Her scrutiny of me was always so intense, and she could always read my mind, but I never seemed to be able to figure out what she was thinking or what her looks meant.

"You said I was hot?" she asked cautiously.

"Yeah," I defended. "All I said was you were hot, and you turn it into this whole, big ..."

"No," she interrupted, "you originally said I was cold, not hot."

"Huh?" I asked, taken off guard.

She repeated: "You said I was cold, that's why you needed to pee, not hot. So why did you just say I was hot, knowing the sexual connotation now?"

"I said you were ..." I began, but then I stopped, not knowing how to continue.

Now I was really confused. Did I call her hot, or did I call her cold? And why did I call her hot now if I called her cold before?

I turned away, blushing.

"I'm confused." I whispered to the air.

That's how I felt. I felt confused, and that hurt.

Everything I was saying and doing was wrong, when everything I tried to do in front of her, I tried to do right, and it just made everything worse that she kept calling me out on it all the time.

"You're confused; you're embarrassed," she agreed, then she pressed: "What is it for you that you have these feelings so strongly now?"

"I don't know," I whispered, still not looking at her.

I felt her hand on my chin, and the gentle, irresistible pull as she forced my face to face her.

"You do know," she said quietly. "Try harder."

"I ..." I said, and tried to look away.

I couldn't. Not from the intensity of her gaze.

"I just guess we never talk about those kinds of things out here." I said.

"'We'?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, "we're not, ... well: frank, I guess, like you people Back East."

She regarded me coolly.

I wonder if she were angry with me now, with me comparing us out here in the New West with her kinds of people Back East.

She said quietly: "Isn't it interesting when you get close to a self-realization, you automatically deflect it away from yourself by switching from 'I' to 'we,' or by asking me a question and then becoming very defensive when I probe what in you prompts the question in the first place."

_"What?"_ I barked, shocked at her accusation.

She raised her hands placatingly. "It wasn't a 'we' who were embarrassed, but as soon as I started to ask you to look within yourself as to what made _you_ embarrassed it became a conversation about regions, and not about yourself any more. You come _this close _to it, to _you_ and what you're dealing with — actually to acknowledging that you're confronting something in yourself, even — and then shy away from the truth, and your defenses rise up, and then you go on the attack, and accuse me of the sin of not being in your region, or me trying to sabotage your new-found maturity with a hug, of all things, or by doing any and everything to avoid confronting that, as you see it, that horrible, little truth that you may actually have a say in your own feelings."

She glared at me. "Why do you do that?"

I looked away.

"I..." I started, then stopped.

Why does she do this to me all the time? I just was trying to ... well, not even be judging, I was just saying we're different, East and West, and she blows up in my face, turning it into this attack against me that I'm this mean person who would rather hurt her than look into myself.

It was like it was mirror time for me with Rosalie, all the time.

She continued coolly. "And when I ask 'why,' it's not because I don't know why you do this. I do. I ask you why-questions so you can know. Do you see the distinction? Do you see when you ask why-questions, you are coming from a place in yourself that lashes out to hurt me, so you can feel justified in your perceived inadequacy? Do you see when I ask you why-questions, it's to challenge you to look into yourself, so you can see how you are being, and becoming aware of that, you can now choose, freely, how to behave now, and going forward?"

She was just so relentless.

"You asked me why I ask you why-questions if I so disapprove of them from you," she said coolly, lecturing me. "And now you know why. Do you see the distinction?"

She turns my innocent comments into sexual ones, and when I get embarrassed at that, instead of easing off, she attacks.

I sighed, and turned to her, tears staining my cheeks.

"No, Rosalie," I said finally. "I don't see that, okay? All I see is ... okay, I just say something, anything, and you like, attack me, all the time, and you never, ever give me one second to breathe, okay?"

She regarded me coolly. "You mean I never give you one second to allow you to regroup your defenses, so you can attack again. You're right. I don't. And even with every ounce of effort I expend to reach through to you, you still close yourself off, and you still lash out at me."

I heard an insane scream tear through my throat, and I found I was laughing. "Rosalie," I screeched, "that's _you!_ _I'm_ the one who's always trying to break through this ..." — I waved at her — "... _whatever!_ This _wall_ you put up, pretending to be so mean and cold when _you're not! _And _you're_ the one who's always lashing out at _me!"_

She paused, regarding me, and smiled sadly.

"Do you see what you just did?" she asked quietly. "You deflected me away from you by attacking me. Do you see we're saying the exact same thing? But do you see you're defensive and lashing out? ... and do you see I'm trying to reach out to you?"

"I..." I said.

I wish I could just die.

There was no escaping this hell. Every time I get embarrassed, she calls me on it, and then says it's all my fault, _and I'm the one_ who's being mean when I try to defend myself, and where does that leave me? Nowhere. I have nowhere to turn, nothing to hold onto, and I'm reduced to not even being able to speak, because anything I say is bad or wrong or both. I can't even say 'I'm sorry,' without bearing the brunt of her furious tongue lashing: _No, you're not sorry, otherwise you wouldn't have done it!_

She injures me, and then she heaps insults on top of that hurt.

I just stood there, looking at her, the hated tears falling from my eyes.

"Help," I whispered.

I didn't even realize I said that. But it was the only thing left I could say.

Rosalie regarded me coolly. "Okay," she said.

She stood there, looking at me looking at her.

"Do you want a hug?" she asked.

I didn't know whether to laugh or to sigh. Would it be weak of me to say 'yes' after I just broke off the last one so I could go pee? Would it be weak of me to think I'm weak and not just say 'yes'?

I didn't know how to answer her.

"I'm scared, Rosalie," I whispered.

Rosalie was so still. "You're scared," she acknowledged, then paused, thinking. "Okay, you're scared. Did you want the hug even though you're scared, or no?"

She didn't even ask why I'm scared. It was like she didn't care, but not like she was being mean, but like me being scared had no bearing on the hug.

What if me being scared _didn't_ have anything to do with the hug, I wondered. What if I could have the hug, scared or no ... would I feel better?

Yes.

"Yes," I whispered to her.

She smiled at me, a small smile, and, coming up to me, gently wrapped me in her arms.

I breathed her in. I let _her, _her hug, fill me. She was cold, but I never _felt_ cold when she held me. I felt her power, her strength, her ... tenderness ... or so I imagined it to be, so I hoped it to be, and that was enough for me. Her: my hope.

"Do you ever think..." I whispered after a while, after I recovered a tiny bit, "Do you ever think you push me too hard?"

Rosalie was quiet for a while, holding me.

"No," she said simply.

I didn't like that answer.

"Why?" I said.

"You said 'push me _too hard.'_ I don't think I push you too hard," she explained.

I breathed her in.

"I think you do," I said.

I said it quietly, factually. I wasn't trying to fight with her or blame her. I was trying to tell her what I felt and how I saw it.

"Do you ever ..." I asked again. "Do you think you might push me too hard one day that I'll just break, Rosalie? Do you ever think about that?"

"Yes," she said.

I waited.

But that was all she said.

"So...?" I asked.

Nothing.

I pulled back out of the hug. She let me.

I looked at her as I asked: "So, what will you do if you push me so hard that I'd break?"

_... like almost this time,_ I thought, then added ruefully: _like almost every time._

She looked back coolly. "What _would _I do? Your implication is subjunctive."

I had no idea what she was saying. But that's not what I cared about.

"Yes, Rosalie," I said, "What _would_ you do?"

She regarded me. "I would pick you up if you were to fall, and hold you if you wished to be held."

I thought about that. "Oh," I said eventually.

Then added: "What if that doesn't fix me?" I dared to ask.

"I'm not interested in fixing you," she responded right away.

I closed my eyes, then opened them again. "Okay," I said. I didn't know what I said wrong. If she broke me, why would she not want to fix me, that is: me, the thing she broke.

I tried saying it a different way. "So what if I stayed broken, even if you picked me up and held me?"

"... and you died, broken?" she asked levelly.

I didn't think about it that way. "Uh," I said, "okay, maybe, and I died, broken, would you just ..."

... _would you just leave me? broken? to die here?_

Could I ask those questions?

I don't think I can even think them without my throat tightening up, choking me.

She waited, then asked: "... would I just ... what?"

"Would you just ..." I whispered around my tightening throat, not being able to complete the thought.

She looked at me for a moment. "I would just hold you, and keep you, and wait for you to recover, and when you did, I would let you be you again. And when you didn't ..."

I waited for what she would do.

"... I would never forgive myself, for all eternity."

She was so calm as she said this.

"You wouldn't let me go," I said, asking, and saying at the same time.

"... until you recovered," she said.

"And if I didn't?"

"Then I wouldn't."

I was afraid she would just give up on me. But there she was, standing, so still, so assured, saying that she _never_ would let go, even if I never became unbroken.

And she said she would let me go and let me be me as soon as I was me again.

And ...

And I never heard somebody say that to me, to anybody, before. Say that, ever, and if they did, mean that.

And here she was, saying that and meaning that.

"Oh." I said.

And I saw the heavy burden I was on her. I saw, not how she was unrelenting with me, but how I, just by being, and by being curious, and by forcing myself into her sphere, was actually the impossibly heavy burden on her. And instead of her crying and wailing about it, she just ... took it on, like it was her task, like it was her duty, and she did it uncomplainingly. She kidnapped me, but instead of _me_ being the victim of this, _she_ was.

I stepped up into her and wrapped her in my arms, and held her. My guardian, my kidnapper, my hope.

She seemed surprised at this sudden outpouring of ... well, okay, how do you say 'not-love'? because I didn't want to ... you know?

... of care. That's it. She seemed surprised at my sudden outpouring of care.

But then she held me back.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"... for being hard on you?" she clarified.

I just held her. I didn't want to fight more, and I didn't need to speak. She knew, even though she pretended she didn't.

"You're welcome," she eventually whispered back, as she held me.

I broke the hug.

I really needed to pee.

I wiped my eyes and trudged toward the outhouse, saying a 'Let's go,' to the air in front of me, knowing that in the pure silence, she would follow, even if not right away. I didn't need to look. I felt her. I felt her as if she were a part of me, and I were a part of her, and I felt ... good for that. I felt more complete than I had ever felt in my life, like we were a new family, like Pa and me used to be, but somehow different than that.

We made it to the outhouse, and I did look back at her. "I'll be just a mo', okay?"

She didn't shrug, but she didn't change expression at all. She didn't care. The little human going to the potty again, what else was she going to do? She didn't care, but I cared, being human, and being a constant imposition on her.

I went into the outhouse, and felt the need to give her a look of 'don't follow me in,' and closed the door securely this time, making sure the latch was in place.


	66. Schadenfreude

**Chapter Summary: **So, now would be the perfect time to tell her, wouldn't it? Seeing as I've so utterly ruined everything else I've touched. Why not? Nothing left. Nothing in me. Just this one last thing so she can laugh in my face at my misery, and I can tunnel into some rock and just stay there, contemplating my perfect navel forever. Joy.

* * *

"Not everything is sexual, Rosalie," I said to the closed door of the outhouse.

I don't know why I feel this, but somehow I feel more confident, in this little tiny space behind the safety of the closed door of the, yeah, I know, potty, not having to confront her impenetrable, critical eyes.

"Oh," Rosalie answered coolly from outside. "Is that a fact?"

I could sense her antagonism, even through her calm disposition, and it made me want to fight her.

"Yes, it is!" I said, feeling the heat rising. It's like she has to fight me on every single thing? And I'm like, _why?_ _Particularly_ on this point where what I said is so obvious. I mean, arguing that everything's sexual is just plain ludicrous.

But, reflecting on it: this whole situation was ludicrous, us arguing over something like this, that so ... pointless, but, I mean, from the potty, too?

That's rather embarrassing, come to think of it.

"Like, for example ...?" she asked, trailing off her words expectantly.

"Well, like, ..." I answered back, "well, like, a lot of things."

I mean, there're so many things that aren't even ... I mean, you can't even possibly say they are sexual, so why is she even asking?

She can be so annoying at times, I swear!

"'A lot of things' says nothing to me, and doesn't help your argument at all," irritation tinged her voice.

I paused. If she were annoying to me, maybe it sounded like I was annoying her, too, at the same time ... for the same reasons? ... for opposite reasons?

I never could tell.

She continued: "Tell me something specific. You're thinking of something in particular that has to be 'not sexual,' so tell me me what exactly what you mean."

Actually, I wasn't thinking of anything at all. I was just annoyed that she made this blanket statement with no proof, just expecting me to believe it, so I didn't know what she meant by me thinking of anything in particular.

But I played along, for her sake, I guess. I don't know why.

"Well, okay, ..." I said, slightly miffed that I was playing her game by her rules again. Then I thought of what could be the most obvious, boring, non-sexual thing in the world.

I hit on it right away. "Well, off the top of my head," I said, pleased again at my spontaneity, "baseball, for example, that's _totally_ non- ..." I paused, feeling ill-at-ease saying the words _'non-sexual'_ so casually, as if being like that, talking like Rosalie, would somehow corrupt who I was, making me more world-weary or ... _carnal, _you know? "... I mean, that has nothing to do with, you know, well ..." I had to say the word, "... _sex."_

I cringed.

There was quiet for a moment, then there was a quiet chuckle.

"You have _got_ to be kidding me, right?" came Rosalie's surprised reply. It was if I had offended her by saying that baseball was obviously not sexual.

I didn't get it.

"Huh?" I said, surprised myself. "No, I'm not," came my quick reply. "I mean, it's the most ..."

Wait.

Oh, shoot! She was talking about _her_ baseball.

I shuddered at the realization, glad I was in the outhouse, so she couldn't see my embarrassment.

"No, Rosalie," I said even faster, my nervousness seeping into my words. "I didn't mean the, you know, that thing you were talking about baseball, I just meant, you know, the game that the high school boys play that ..." Oh, my God! ...

_Oh, my God!_

I can't even explain a real game of baseball without making it sound exactly like what she was talking about earlier that caused the terrifying blow up from her: boys playing games.

The double meaning was obvious, even to a stupid little girl like me.

I tried to salvage what I could, desperation making it hard to think, making it hard to breathe. "I just meant baseball, Rosalie, not the thing you were talking about earlier," then I whispered, terrified: "I just meant plain old baseball."

Her voice came to me quietly, calmingly, somehow lower to the ground, it sounded like: "That's what I meant, too," she said. "I meant the game of baseball: nine boys fielding on one team, a batter on the other. Baseball." she said.

"Oh," I whispered. Then I said: "So, see? There's nothing sexu-..."

Rosalie continued on: "Totally sexual."

"Huh?" I asked in surprise. "Rosalie, c'mon! Are you joking? You have to be joking, right? Baseball is the most boringest thing in the world! You just sit there in the bleachers watching a bunch of boys stand there for hours and then ... and then ... what? _Nothing_ happens, and then you go home and fall asleep, pissed off that you're getting further behind on your homework and chores and why did you just waste a night doing ... _nothing!"_

I don't know that 'boringest' is a word ... strike that: I do know that it isn't, but it should be, because that's what baseball is.

"Ah," she said in understanding. "They are over there, and you are in the bleachers. They have nothing to do with you, and you have nothing to do with them. A nice, little, safe choice to prove your point."

"Yeah..." I said cautiously. Her voice was even, but there was an undercurrent of menace to it.

"Do you know what I just _so love?"_ she asked, now sounding furious, like her anger was building and building inside her.

She didn't wait for my answer.

"I just so love sitting here, looking out into the forest, talking to the_ fucking trees_ while you sit there in the crapper, nice and safe behind a closed door talking about nice and safe little topics that mean nothing to you and your life."

"Uh ..." I said.

The door ripped open, and light from the outside world burst into the outhouse, bathing totally exposed me, and there stood Rosalie, glaring at me with black, furious eyes, her face pinched with anger.

I shrieked, shocked by her sudden appearance and squeezed into myself, shutting my legs together and hunching down over myself.

_"Hello!"_ I shouted. "What the hell, Rosalie? You ever hear of knocking?"

My protest left her totally unmoved. She ignored me and what I said. It was like I had said nothing at all. Or nothing of importance. Or like: she didn't care.

"Get up," she snarled. "Let's get going."

I felt my face go white. "And like, okay, you know, what if I had to, you know, poop, Rosalie, huh? You ever think of that?"

"Again? Right after you did this morning?" She looked at me with contempt.

"Maybe?" I said weakly.

"And what if you didn't, and you were cowering in here, so you wouldn't have to face me? Have _you_ considered that?" she demanded. "What would that make you?"

I looked away, unable to face her harsh, judgmental eye.

"Would that make you a chicken-shit?" she demanded.

Her words hit me hard, and my face stung as if I had been actually slapped.

"I'm not a chicken-shit, Rosalie," I whispered, trying to sound insulted.

But I didn't sound insulted. I sounded petulant. I sounded like I had been caught.

"Glad to hear it," was her sarcastic reply. "So that means you'll get up now so I can have the pleasure of seeing the lovely expressions parade across your face as we talk, right?"

I bit my lip. "Uh, okay," I whispered.

She just stood there, glaring at me.

"Uh, Rosalie?" I said.

Her expression didn't change. I couldn't look into her glaring eyes. I turned my head away, and made shooing motions toward her with my hand.

"What?" she demanded. "It's not like I haven't seen it all before." Then she added: "Every day." Then: "Regularly."

I swallowed. "I know, but ..."

I couldn't continue. So I waved her away again.

Rosalie snorted.

I heard the door close and felt the the darkness prevade my little, tiny space of safety and privacy. A place of privacy that wasn't at all yesterday and before, as Rosalie just said.

So why was it so important to me now?

_Think, little chicken-shit,_ I thought to myself. _Don't shy away from yourself._

Why am I so shy about myself now, when before I wasn't?

Well, before there was nothing I could do about it, right? I mean, she's seen me naked, and stripped me naked, even, but those times it was like I was dying or freezing or something, and she had to do that, and I knew that.

And besides, I was much too weak then to do anything about it, even if the only thing I can do about it now is just to protest and wave her away. She's the one who can do anything and everything. She's the one who had to decide to step out and to leave me alone.

And she did.

But why is that so important now? My privacy?

It's important now, because ... because I _can_ take care of myself now. I don't need her to strip me down of my wet and freezing clothes and hold me up by the stove to keep me alive. No, I'm perfectly fine now.

But I know that's not the real reason. That's the plain, nice, and safe little reason.

The real reason is ... I guess ... well ...

The real reason is that ... well ... she's been hugging me and I've been hugging her, and ...

And, okay, there is that shared intimacy, that connectedness that I now have with her, and I like it.

I just realized that I like it.

But she's been saying that everything's sexual, and that makes me _really_ uncomfortable, and ...

And I don't want ... to cheapen this. I don't want her to look at me in a sexual way. I don't want our connectedness to be degraded something like that ... to become something sexual.

Wow!

Rosalie's right! When I try to deflect away from myself, I don't learn anything: I just make safe little excuses, but when I look into myself, I see what I'm doing, and why! And that little handwave of mine, so automatic? I now see that there was a lot more to it than me being shy. Or I was shy, but it was for a good reason. I wanted to protect what's just become ours. I am shy, but that's not bad, nor selfish. That can be good even, or noble.

I smiled to myself, pleased. I felt, having looked into myself, ... I felt a new confidence.

I looked up and around for the tp.

Uh, oh.

"Shoot," I muttered. No tp. Just my luck. And why would there be?

"What is it?" came Rosalie's voice.

"Uh, sorry, Rosalie," I said, "but there's, uh, nothing to clean myself with in here."

The door opened again. Rosalie took out another hanky and handed it to me.

"How many of those do you carry?" I asked.

"Enough," was her reply. Then she looked at me critically. "Why did you say 'sorry'?" she asked.

She framed in the doorway, so imposing.

"I didn't want to bother you," I said simply.

"So you were going to sit in here for how long so as to not bother me?"

She sounded bothered.

I looked down. "I'm sorry," I repeated helplessly.

"For ...?" she demanded.

I sighed.

What was I sorry for? This time, I mean.

"I guess," I said, looking back to her. "I guess I think I'm supposed to have it all together, and I don't, and I was like, just a second ago, well, I thought of something and you said I wasn't supposed to shy away from myself, so I didn't, and I was pleased that I didn't, but then when I wanted to tell you I went to ... you know ... wipe, but, gee, can't do that when I don't have tp and I felt bad because I should've thought of ..."

Rosalie held up her hands.

"Too fast," she said. "You're going too fast."

I stopped.

"Breathe," she said.

I breathed.

She regarded me as I tried to pull myself together.

She brought her hands together in a crushing motion. "You're collapsing everything together."

"Huh?" I said.

She had my attention now, so she paused then explained herself calmly. "So you had a realization now. Good. And you didn't have paper. Okay, I don't see how that's your fault ..."

"But I wanted to ..." I began.

"Sh," she scolded.

I bit my lip.

"Let me finish," she said, impatience in her tone. "So there was no paper. Not your fault. It just wasn't there. But you made it your fault, didn't you?"

I looked away.

She cleared her throat, so I looked back.

"What you're doing," she continued, "is that everything has to be perfect for anything to work. This is a perfect setup for paralysis and despair, don't you see? So you have this realization, but then you immediately sabotage yourself. Nothing you do is good enough, because it all depends on everything being just right, doesn't it?"

"I just ..." I said.

She held out her hands.

I stopped.

"Do you get what I'm saying?" she asked.

I sighed. "Yeah, I got it."

"Then why do you have to reply right away, without even listening to what I'm saying?" she demanded.

I wanted to snap back that I heard her every word, but then, wouldn't that be doing what she was just scolding me for what I was doing?

See? Do you see how she's always right? and how I'm always wrong? How she makes me always wrong?

"It's just that, ..." I began sadly. "You're so ..." I sighed. "You're so perfect, in everything, all the time. And I just don't ..."

I looked down.

"And I just don't measure up," I said.

Rosalie regarded me closely.

"Okay," she said finally.

I looked at her sadly, a girl in the potty, imperfect, looking at perfection.

"I see what you're saying," she said. "But consider this: what if it doesn't matter if you measure up?"

"But it does matter," I blurted out.

Her lips twitched upward. And she put one finger to them.

I shut up, chastised.

"And what if you do measure up? Have you considered that?" she asked.

I didn't. The thought didn't even enter my mind. Because why would it? She's always angry with me and scolding me, so obviously I didn't measure up.

_Equals._ I thought bitterly. How can she offer me 'equals' when I can't even hope to measure up? Was it like some cruel joke of hers that I was just too dumb to get, and she would laugh at little, stupid me behind my back as I tried and tried to be her equal?

But I just didn't get that feeling about her, that she was cruel like that. I mean why would she keep pushing me, just to watch me fail all the time? I'm sure there are people like that, I mean, I don't have to look past my own town and in my own school to see people just ... _happy_ to see the misery of others ... of me: laughing at me when I was embarrassed about my period or looking dumb in class, whispering to each other and pointing at me.

But Rosalie wasn't like that. She didn't laugh a cruel laugh at me. She didn't point at me and have a wicked smile on her face when I failed. She was hard, and she pushed me, but it felt like she hurt when I was hurting, that she was frustrated at my not getting something.

"No," I said eventually. "It's just that I keep making mistakes, and you ... don't."

She nodded in understanding.

"What if I'm not allowed to?" she whispered.

I felt my eyebrows crease in surprise.

"I don't know what you mean," I said after trying to figure out why she said that.

"You can make mistakes, and you can recover and grow from them. You're human," she said, her lips twitching, smiling lightly at me. "But when I make a mistake, there's no recovery from it. I can have anything I want," she said with no pleasure, nor delight, nor hope in her voice. "I can just reach out and take it." She demonstrated, grasping the air in a lightning-quick grasp of her fist. "I can have whatever I want: money, power, a place to stay, ... blood." She smiled at me: "All I have to do is murder and destroy to achieve my aim. It's all so easy to do."

She looked at me for understanding.

"But so I get whatever I want, whenever I want, no mistakes, because I wipe those off the face of the Earth. Do you see the problem?"

I nodded.

Her eyes narrowed.

"What is it?" she demanded.

"You feel ... bad for ... having to kill, right? To get what you want?" I said.

"Phfft!" she snorted, then added a raucous "Wrong!" for emphasis.

"What do I care about people in the way? I didn't care before, so why should I care now?"

"Oh," I said. I guess I didn't see, then.

"The problem is now that I can have whatever I want, what's the point? It all becomes valueless, drained of any purpose or meaning. What do I need money for, when I can just take what I want? What's the point of power when I can force my will so effortlessly on anyone or anything, and kill or destroy them if they don't play by my game?"

"Like me?" I asked.

Then I looked away quickly from her hard glare.

I was surprised to hear her chuckling lightly.

I looked back at her. "You just don't get it, do you?" she asked.

"Uh..." I said.

Her look became hard again. "So," she said, all business-like, "are we going to continue this conversation like this, you on your throne, showing me your altogether, and me out here, looking at your altogether, or are you going to freshen up first so we can carry on this conversation in the nice, fresh outside air?"

I blushed and turned away quickly. "The second one," I mumbled.

_She_ wanted to talk and talk to me while I'm in the potty, then she scolds me for it? What was I gonna do? Wipe right in front of her? I think not!

"Very well, then," Ms. Bossy said, "get along with it; we don't have all day."

Then she closed the door to the outhouse.

_"'Get along with it'?" _I murmured. What's gotten into her? I felt my brow cloud as I muttered to myself: "Does she think she owns the joint?"

"I heard that," she said, clear as a bell, from outside. "And, yes, I do own the joint. Deal with it."

... _and _her perfect hearing! _Hmmphf!_

I looked down at the hanky she gave me, it was printed with an elegant emerald design with gold trim. It felt like a crime to use this piece of art, perfumed with her scent, to do something so base as to wipe myself. But else was I going to do? Not wipe and walk back with panties I know had pee on them? If I didn't die from embarrassment at every step, Rosalie'd probably kill me for not tending to my hygiene like a good and proper lady that I was supposed to be now.

Heh. 'A good and proper lady' talking about sex with her ... friend who's a girl. Do ladies do that? I never, _never, _heard adults talking like this and about these things when the wives and moms got together and twittered among themselves as the kids played at the Friday fish fries.

Never.

I sighed and wiped myself with a hanky that would've put every piece in the 'Ekalaka Fine Arts Museam' to shame — that is: if we had one — and pulled up my pants.

I looked down at the hanky.

"What do I do with this?" I asked quietly as I opened the door, looking at the teen-dream-beauty queen, looking every bit as regal as royalty if we did have kings and queens in America.

She nodded back toward the stalls. "Discard it."

I looked down at the hanky.

I felt my face tighten. _Such a waste!_ I thought. Then, feeling determined, I folded it neatly and put it in my back pocket.

Rosalie gasped. "What are you doing? That's dirty!"

"I'll wash it," I said. It was hardly even damp, and just throwing it for this one use felt like a crime.

Rosalie's eyes narrowed and she pursed her lips in displeasure.

"And your denim trousers? You'll wash those, too?" she said with distaste, looking at me if I were some bug.

"Yeah, I'll wash those, too." I said. I shrugged internally. They'd have to be washed, anyway: that's what you did with clothes you wore, not just throw them into the fire because you wore them one time.

I felt annoyed. I don't know where she got this attitude about things or money, as if she could pluck it off trees or let bills fall to the ground like pine cones, but these were hard times, and people were suffering, and she just used stuff and threw it away like she was too good to have cloth touch her that was ever worn once before. You hear about those ultra-rich people, so filled with their own entitlement that they had closets so big that they had a bag labeled for each day of the year, and each bag they had a dress.

That's the kind of excess that got our Country in trouble in the first place: the 'Roaring '20s' with champaign fountains lead to this decade of famine and hard times where you heard about people actually _starving_ in the cities Back East and freezing to death in their tiny apartments because they could only afford the rent but not the heat nor food bill.

That was the price of excess. And she's been running the show up to now, but we weren't Back East, we were _here_ so it was about time for me to start taking charge and showing her how things were done here.

Leastways when it came to clothes, anyway.

"'Yeah'?" she asked reprovingly.

I grimaced.

What fights did I want to fight?

"Yes, Rosalie," I said, acknowledging her, but then: "I said 'yeah.' I'm not super-formal like you are, and we're not at some high-class restaurant or ... I don't know, in one of your soirées talking to your banker friends, like I'd ever do that, anyway. But I can be formal and polite, I suppose, if need be, but I just got out of the potty and just answered your question about laundry, so I don't have to be all stiff and say 'yes, Mistress Rosalie, I shalt wash this handkerchief with water for the washing of cloth.' 'Yeah' is fine ... I didn't go to finishing school, and I don't need to be finished or polished or anything like that; I'm fine just as I am, ..."

Then I paused, getting really angry. "And why do I have to fight so hard just to say 'yeah,' anyway, Rosalie? I mean, really: c'mon! Jeez!" I spat out the last words in annoyance.

Rosalie regarded me coolly. Measuring me, again. Always measuring me.

She broke into a smile. "'Commonjeese'?" she imitated my irritated words perfectly while still injecting bubbling laughter into them.

_"YES!"_ I shouted, not letting go of my anger. She could laugh at me and my country ways, but I didn't have to find it funny just because she did.

Rosalie looked at me again, being patient, I could tell, masking her amusement for my sake, for the sake of my anger.

How come she's always so calm when I'm angry at her? That just annoys me more sometimes. And other times she just blows up when things are light and easy and funny.

She scares me, she annoys me, and ...

... she's my anchor, grounding me, keeping me alive, caring for me, pulling me back together when I fall apart.

She totally, totally ... pisses me off in her unpredictability. I can't breathe without her help, sometimes it feels she has to hold me together or I'd just burst into a million pieces, and other times she so infuriates me or scares me, I get all choked up and feel smothered by her, like she's squashing me underfoot, and not even trying at that!

"Two things:" she said. "Firstly, I'm nobody's mistress, _particularly_ not yours ..." she glared at me for that. I guess I got her goat with the formal title, for some reason. She continued: "...and you're nobody's servant. Please remember that."

"Okay, ..." I said, thinking a _'whatever.'_ She wants me to be all proper and then she's like, _no, it's not like that._ Like I said: whatever.

"Secondly," she added, "yes, you have to fight for what you are. Always. If saying 'yeah' is important to you, and to who you are, then: yes, fight for it."

"Fight for saying 'yeah'?" I asked incredulously.

"Yeah," she answered easily, smirking.

I narrowed my eyes at her. "How come you get to say 'yeah' just now, and it's okay, but when I say it, it means I'm not ladylike, and you scold me for it?"

She shrugged. "I know who I am."

"And I don't?" I demanded.

"No," she said, disagreeing, "in this, you showed that you do know who you are, and I respect you, and your choices. You showed your mettle in this."

"Oh," I said, surprised. She took that so easily.

But why did I have to fight so hard for it, then?

Why doesn't she have to?

I felt to to be unfair: she gets to do anything and everything, even no-no things, according to her. And that's okay for her, but the second I step out of line, she's onto me, pouncing like a hawk, and as soon as I defend myself, she either just lets it go or beats me down so hard with her guilt-trip questions and reproaches that I just want to crawl under a rock and die rather than face her arch looks.

It was unfair, but I could whine and pout about it like a baby, or I could be an adult. If she just let it go, and let me say 'yeah,' then that's what I wanted, right?

Why throw a tantrum about the unfairness of it all when I got exactly what I wanted after all?

I sighed, capitulating, accepting her acceptance with as much good grace as I could. "Okay," I said, and smiled a small smile.

That actually made me feel much, much better. I suppose if I were Rosalie, I would've fought and fought until I made her think the way I wanted her to think and be happy or at least be beaten into the ground with her superior reasoning. But I wasn't her, I was me, and I didn't have to fight over anything. I could just go along with her, and still be me, and still be happy about it.

I felt a warmth suffuse me. I now knew how I could beat her: instead of fighting with her, I'd just agree with her.

She saw my smile, and the warmth in my eyes, and smiled tentatively back at me.

It was as if she were shy around me, for some reason.

My eyebrows creased.

"Rosalie," I said, "you know, before I had to, you know ... pee, I had a thought, but then I had to pee, and I thought something about me, and then ..." I sighed. "You said I just don't get it, and ..."

I blushed and looked away.

"And I don't get it. I don't get what I don't get, do you ... well, get it? And ... I've got all these thoughts in my head, and that's exactly what I was thinking and ..."

Rosalie lightly touched my chin with her fingertip, turning my eyes to her.

She smiled faintly at me. "One thing at a time, remember?"

I stopped and breathed.

"Focus, right?" I said.

She smiled in confirmation.

"Does that help you?" I asked. "When it's all coming at you? Do you just take one thing at a time?"

Rosalie shrugged easily. "I suppose it helped when I was human. Successful or dedicated or motivated people do that, but as I am now..." She shrugged again.

"What's that mean?" I asked and imitated her shrug.

The corner of her mouth twitched up. "I am in Eternity now. I can handle whatever's thrown at me, no matter how many things come at me, and no matter fast."

"Oh," I said, "so, you're thinking of a bunch of things when you're, like, talking to me now?"

"Yes..." she said.

"Isn't that distracting?" I asked.

"No," she said. "Not really. Baby," she explained, something like sorrow in her voice, "humans are so slow! You speak so slowly, you think so slowly, you move so slowly. I can take in everything you're thinking and feeling and saying and all those spaces when you pause to think or to breathe or to form the next word, I have an Eternity to think then to dismiss many things."

She shrugged apologetically.

"Oh," I said, and I felt my head hang. "That must be why you think I'm so dumb..."

"No," she came back forcefully, "that's why _you_ think you're so dumb." Then she added just as firmly: "I don't think that at all. In fact, I'm very impressed with you. I've met both vampires and humans, and _you're_ the one who impresses me, not them."

"Really?" I asked, almost shocked, feeling my ears turn pink at the compliment.

She smirked. "Yes, really."

"Oh," I said humbly.

I couldn't see how she could say that. The most intelligent thing I've said today is 'oh,' unless you count the sign language, and then I scored bonus points with her by signing the word 'potty'! I mean, way to step up my game, huh?

"So, your question?" Rosalie asked.

"Oh," I said, coming back to the point. And saying 'oh,' again, I realized. Great.

"Ahm," I added helpfully, "Well, you said you can just push people around, like, ... me, you know? You boss them around and then when they don't do what you say, you off them, but then when I said that, you said I just don't get it ... so, ..." I ended weakly, looking into her disapproving eyes.

"You know what else I just love?" she asked with distaste.

I waited for her rhetorical answer to her rhetorical question.

She glared at me.

"I just love," she said, "how you filter everything I say to you through those layers and layers of thoughts you have until what I said is translated into that unrecognizable composition of self-criticism masquerading as my voice."

"You love that, do you?" I asked to the ground.

That's good that she loves that, I thought, because I'm really good at doing that, I guess, according to her.

"Yes," she said with evident displeasure. "I just wish that you would listen to my words and take them in as simply what I said, not what you thought I said, nor how you can blame yourself somehow with what I'm saying, instead of what I'm really saying."

She paused, glaring at me. "It's as if you delight in your own misery. You Germans have a term, _Schadenfreude, _which means to delight in the misery of others, so how can you take such pleasure in reveling in your own?"

"I don't 'delight' in my own misery, Rosalie," I said quietly.

She looked at me levelly. "Mmhm," she said dismissively.

Then I dared something. "Do you ... I mean, ... I think you don't but ... do you ..."

"Ask the question," she ordered impatiently.

I looked at her. "Do you shadenfroidy me? I mean ..."

"You mean ...?" she demanded.

"I mean," I said, "I think you don't, but I ... Rosalie, I just have to know. Are you just ... setting me up all the time so I fail, and like," I looked away, "and like, pretending to want me to make it, but every time I don't, and are you like ..."

I swallowed.

"I mean, are you like ..."

"Yes?" she demanded cruelly, not helping me at all. Not one ounce of sympathy in her voice.

"Rosalie," I looked back at her, "are you just setting me up every time to see me fail, 'cause that's what you wanna have happen, really? I mean ..."

She held up her hand. "Stop with the 'I mean,'" she ordered.

She waited.

Then she turned it around on me. "What do you think?" she asked.

"Oh, God, Rosalie," I said. "I m-..." — _Shoot! Not supposed to say 'I mean' anymore, either! _— "I _hope_ you're not doing that, but I just have to know!"

"Because ...?" she asked.

"Because," I said desperately, "because if you're doing that, then me trying is just _pointless! _Don't you see? It means that no matter how hard I try, I won't measure up, and that's on purpose and you're just ... _God, Rosalie!_ ... you're just _feeding_ on my misery, like that shaddy-thingy."

She regarded me levelly. "You still didn't tell me what you think," she said coolly.

"Can you throw me a line here, please, and help me?" I begged.

"Not this time," she said firmly.

"Why not?"

Silence.

What? It was a real question. But she just looked at me, coolly, so regal.

"Why not?" I repeated.

She sighed. "If I told you to trust me, would you just trust me, because I told you I was trustworthy?"

"Uh, maybe?" I said.

She smirked at that. "No, you wouldn't. You would choose to trust me, and then trust me, or you would choose not to trust me, and not trust me. Trust comes from you, not me, and that's exactly what you're asking: am I toying with you? Well, am I?"

"Uh, no..." I said hesitantly.

"Why not?" she demanded.

"Um, ..." I said, and thought silently the hopeless and useless _''cause you're not. 'cause I hope you're not.'_

"Think!" she commanded.

I thought. Helplessly, I thought.

I didn't know what to think.

She said sadly, "I just wish you could see how far you've come these past few days. Would a person who was toying with you, building up your hope, only to hurt you and revel in your misery, would that person celebrate your successes? actively help you to better yourself?"

"Uh, no, Rosalie," I said, defeated, "I guess not."

"You _'guess not'?"_ she snapped angrily.

"It's just that ..." I said, "you hold all the cards, and you have all the answers, and you can just do anything you want and I have no way of telling you anything different..."

"Yes," she said evenly, "I hold all the cards, I have all the answers. I come from a position of strength. So, let me ask you: if I can do anything I want, and I can, by the way, then why would I bother setting you up? Hurting others? Hurting you? ... and delighting in that? Only a weak person would do that, and _I_ am not weak."

I looked at her in shock.

"But you are," I said.

She tilted her head to one side and snorted. "I beg your pardon?" she asked in an affronted tone.

"I said, Rosalie, that you _are _weak," my voice was somewhere between awe at this realization that I was revealing to _her, _of all people, and fear, not knowing where this was going ... or knowing where it was going, but not knowing how she'd react when I played the one card I had against her.

She waited.

"You're the weakest person I know," I said. I took a step toward her, raising my hand, chest-high. She looked down at my hand and backed a step.

She was so, so ... _weak._ Fragile. Hopeless.

I took another step forward, and my hand rested on her chest.

"I know you, Rosalie Hale," I said, in a voice I didn't recognize. It wasn't mine. It was filled with certainty and confidence.

She barely whispered a shocked _"What?"_ rooted to the spot, my hand on her chest.

"You asked me who I am," I said, "and I couldn't answer that. But now I can. I know you. I know your heart. You didn't die of ... anything. You died of a broken heart, and it's still broken, isn't it?"

I looked at her.

Her eyes were fixed on me, her hand was over my hand on her still chest.

She looked like a cornered animal: trapped, scared, and, being scared, very, very dangerous.

"Isn't it?" I demanded, ignoring everything but _her._ Ignoring the scared, ferocious animal, cornered and dangerous, and looking into her soul to see the scared little girl inside who just wanted ...

Who just wanted ... what?

What did this scared little girl want?

Rosalie's eyes hardened, and her hand over my hand gently but firmly removed it from her chest and put it down by my side.

"Yes," she said, now distant again, now cool and untouchable. "Yes, I died of a broken heart. I thought I could give it to Royce. I was wrong. I thought I could give it to Edward. _Edward!_ I thought I could give it to anybody, ... Please, God, just anybody, but ..."

She turned away from me.

I reached out my hand to her back, my heart going out to the void that was the empty shell I now saw as her.

"But I don't have a heart now, anymore," she whispered to the still air.

She turned back to me quickly, catching me with a look as I was in mid-step toward her.

Her look froze me in place, arm outstretched toward her. She looked down at my hand, then back up into my eyes.

"You see me," she said sadly. "You see the nothing inside me that was."

I looked out to her, arm outstretched, heart beating against my chest, tugging to be free of the tightness in me to go out to her.

"Rosalie, ..." my whole being cried out to her, wanting to comfort her, "please, ..."

Then I saw it.

She couldn't hurt me.

She was hurting. All she was was _hurt._ But she couldn't hurt me.

She looked down at my arm.

"Please," I said, "let me ..."

Let me _what?_

"Let me," I hung my head, giving myself up. "Let me fill you, okay? Let me fill the emptiness inside you."

Rosalie looked from my hand to me.

"No."

I ... wait. What?

She said something, but I didn't understand what she said.

"What?" I asked.

"No," she said, "you can't."

And then she turned away from me.

I still didn't understand her. Or maybe I did, but I didn't want to believe her. I couldn't.

"Rosalie, ..." I said.

My arm was just hanging out there. I looked like a complete idiot, begging a piece of carved stone to let me in. I felt so lost, so forlorn, not knowing what to do or how to help her.

I let my hand fall to my side.

"Did you want a hug?" I asked hopefully.

"No."

Okay.

O-kay, _ouch._ I just found out she could hurt me.

There was something like ten feet between us, but that space was nothing to the utter distance I felt from her as she closed herself off from me.

She was utterly lost, and from the depths of her pain, all she could do is close herself off, and hurt me.

And we stood there. Two hurting people.

And I nodded my head.

And then I got fucking furious.

She was the strong one, was she? She was the one who was gonna hold me until I got better?

"Rosalie, ..." I said, now my head shaking, ever so slightly with the bottled rage inside me.

No response. She was gone.

This just fueled my rage.

I walked right up to her, the snow crunching under my boots, and I wrapped her in my arms, pressing my face against the back of her neck, pulling myself into her as tightly as I could.

She stiffened.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded angrily.

I held her.

"I told you I didn't want your hug," she added after I didn't answer.

I was so furious. I just held her tightly, not moving an inch.

"Tough," I said as calmly as I could. It came out as a snarl.

Her hands came up to mine, her forearms covering mine. "You know, I could rip your arms right off you," she said coolly, as if she were considering the option seriously.

"You said I have to fight for what I believe?" I whispered intensely. "Well, guess what? I'm fighting."

"And you're willing to fight for what? This? Me?" she said quietly, disbelievingly.

"Yes."

"Why?" she demanded.

"Rosalie," I sighed, my breath passing over her shoulder. "You are my hope, and I'm willing to fight, I'm willing to die, for you, even if you're not, you quitter."

I put that last jab in, and I said it _really hard, _hoping it stung her.

"Well," she said, considering, "that's all very noble, but also pointless. There's nothing to fight for in me. I'm just an empty shell, ravenous, filling the emptiness with darkness and blood over and over again. There's no room for your misplaced hope."

She started to pull my arms away from her.

"Stop," I said.

"What?"

Her voice was calm, but it was dangerous.

I didn't care.

"Yur gonna hafta rip my arms off," my voice was slurring and my eyes were blurry for some stupid reason.

"What?" she repeated, but this time incredulously.

"Yhou," I said, "are gonna hafta rip my arms off if you try'n ta take'm off now, goddammit!"

My voice got more strident with each word.

She stopped. She stopped pulling my arms off her chest.

Then ...

My hands returned to her chest, my arms covering her front.

Her hands covered mine again, over her.

She was quiet for a moment.

"How long until you let me go?" she asked quietly.

It was like ...

It was like _she_ was _my_ prisoner, or something.

Well, okay, goddammit, she _was!_

I sucked in a huge gasp of air, of her, her absolutely pure and beautiful essence.

I hadn't realized I had been holding my breath.

"Imma gonna ..." I hiccoughed. "I'm gonna ..." I tried collecting myself, "hold you 'til you're you again, and not this empty nothing of despair."

She was quiet.

Then she asked: "What if 'this empty nothing of despair' _is_ me?"

"Then we're aren't moving from this spot for forever, 'cause I don't believe that ... line, Rosalie, and nor do you ..." I bit off a _'so there!'_ nearly biting my tongue off in my conviction that translated right into the very tight feeling I had in my jaw.

"'Forever,' eh?" she asked and I heard a bit of sardonic irony tinge her voice. "That's an awfully long time."

"Yup," I said, almost sobbing with relief.

She was cynical, but at least she was back.

Leastways a little bit.

Her voice became contemplative. "I'm tempted to take you up on that. I certainly can last that long, but how long will you last before we have to turn around again to visit your favorite place in the world?"

"Ha, ha!" I muttered sarcastically, then I felt myself grow grimmer with determination. "I'll take that bet, Ms. Rosalie-who-has-got-me-all-figured-out. I can pee right here and right like this, you know."

Let's see how Ms. Prim-and-proper takes that!

"Hm," she said, totally unperturbed. "A very, very tempting offer. You have peed right here, and on me, too, so there's nothing new there with which you can threaten me. But nice try, sweetie."

"Oh," I said, and thought: _shoot! I can't even out-shock her!_

And I thought those lady-like types were supposed to be all dainty and stuff. So much for that.

"So what do I get if I outlast you?" her voice became sly and crafty, gleefully anticipating all manner of evil things she'd get out of winning.

"Um ..." I said, shifting uncomfortably.

She chuckled lightly and patted my hand.

"No," she said, "too much to do now. I'll pass on that bet ... or would you like a rain-checque?"

I sighed with double relief. "It sounds like you're feeling better ...?"

"Yes," she said.

Then she paused, and said very, very quietly: "Thank you."

If I could've crushed her into me, I would have.

She patted my hand again lightly, kindly. "Let me go? We have much to go over."

"No," I said, letting her go.

"'No'?" she asked.

I took a step back, and she turned to look at me, curiosity filling her eyes.

"No," I said firmly. "We don't have nothing to go over."

"I beg your pardon?" Rosalie's eyebrows creased.

"You heard me," I said, my jaw tight.

She regarded me coolly, again measuring me.

But this time, she was right.

This time: she was right. The measurement didn't matter. Not anymore.

"But, ..." she said, almost helplessly, "your questions. The lie... I have to show you ..."

I shook my head. "No, Rosalie," I said.

"But..." she said.

"Listen to me," I said firmly.

She stopped her protest, stilled, and looked at me, surprised.

"Rosalie," I said. "I don't have questions any more. I don't care."

She started to shake her head.

"No," I said more forcefully. _"Listen to me!"_ I almost shouted.

She stopped again. Her lips pursed.

"Okay," she said quietly.

"I don't care, Rosalie," I said slowly. "I don't care about my questions any more. I don't care about your mind games, your 'lie'-thing with Edward, or anything else, I just ..."

"It's not just about me and Edward, baby, this lie is ..." she interrupted.

_"SH!" _I hissed. _"Sh! sh! sh! SHHH!"_

Her head tilted on its side. She glared at me.

Then she asked incredulously. "Did you just shush _me?"_

I realized that, yes, I just did shush her.

If I were in a better mood, I would've felt _pretty darn good_ about that.

But I wasn't.

"Rosalie, okay. How did you learn all those things?" I demanded.

Her eyes became caring and sympathetic. "Baby, the hard way." Then she repeated sadly, "The hard way."

"Well," I said, "okay, then guess how I'm gonna learn them."

It wasn't really a question.

"But..." she began.

I shook my head again. "No, Rosalie," I said. "You being the teacher ...? No. It's not working. You don't know nothing about ..."

I put my hand to my chest.

But then I stopped. "No," I said, with a dawning realization. "No, maybe you know everything about the heart, but you learned all the wrong things. You can't teach me the right things by telling me about lies and the wrong things, Rosalie. You can't. And you can't ..." I paused and gulped. "You can't ..." Then I interrupted myself. "No, I know some things now, too, Rosalie Hale. I know some things about me, and I know some things about you. And you being the teacher is not us being equals. No, what it is is it's you being in charge, again, and me just nodding my head and going along with it. You want equals? Well, then, you have to take me like this. You have to take me ..."

I looked away.

Then I whispered. "You have to take me taking you in my arms when you're broken, too, Rosalie Hale, 'cause ..." I tried to breathe. Then I tried to slow down my breathing.

Two tears squeezed out of my eyes. I didn't mind them.

"'cause I think you need me. I think you need me, Rosalie Hale, even though you say you're all alone and you don't need nobody nor nothing, but I think you ..."

I swallowed.

_I think you need me more than I need you sometimes, Rosalie Hale, and that's what I think._

I couldn't say it. The tears were flowing freely down my cheeks now. I didn't mind them.

I tried not to.

I just stood there. Alone.

I put everything out there, in front of her again. And she could laugh at me. She could hurt me.

I was doing this all the time now.

Was this what adults did? How come I never saw an adult doing this back home? How come this hurt so much, ... all the time?

A hand gently touched then rested on my shoulder.

I sniffled.

"So what do you want to do now?" a small voice asked me.

It was a girl's voice. A voice that wasn't all _Rosalie, _so strong and sure and masking all her anger and having to know everything.

It was just a girl, talking to a girl.

I turned to her and looked at her face.

I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life. Her hard lines had softened. It was as if she dropped the mask. Finally.

"Rosalie," I sighed. "I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm cold, okay? I've been out here all morning, and I'm cold. I'm not like you, okay? I told you that. I can't last all day and ..."

She held up her hand.

I stopped.

She smiled shyly.

"Okay," she said quietly.

She looked at me, examining me. Little me.

"Would you like me to carry you back to the cabin?" she asked solicitously, "Or ...?"

"Or?" I asked.

"Did you want to walk back?" she asked softly.

I looked at her. She looked so ... _fragile._ Like I had just dashed everything she was, everything she hoped for, because I wasn't going to play her game anymore. Not by her rules, anyway.

"I can walk, I guess," and sighed dispiritedly.

"You 'guess'?" she asked reprovingly.

I didn't know whether to laugh or to smack her.

I just looked at her for a second, then shook my head.

"What?" she asked defensively.

I smiled grimly. "It's really, really hard for you to give up that ... bossy-teachy ... thing," I said, floundering, and failing to find a better word than 'thing.'

"Oh," she said surprised. Then she looked away in shame.

I just looked at her. It was so ingrained in her, she didn't even realize she just did that little corrective comment to me.

I touched her shoulder.

She turned back to me.

I looked at her forgivingly. "Yeah," I said, "I can walk. Just ... just don't wear me down, okay? A walk to the W.C. and back, that's all it was supposed to be, right? Can we just make it back to the cabin without you going screwy on me?"

"I..." she said, then turned away, looking despondent.

"Is that too hard a thing to ask?" I asked, disappointment creeping into my voice.

She needed me. But she couldn't just trample over me. I'm not a doormat. I have my space, and if she can't give that to me ...

She read my mind.

"Maybe it's best you go alone," she said sadly. "I can't tell the future: I can't say 'I'll be on good behavior,' when you see that I'm not. You see what happens. You say something, and I just ..."

She shrugged, not facing me.

"Can you at least _try?"_ I pleaded.

Going alone? Is that what she wanted?

Sure. I could go alone. I knew my way now. Not like what? two? three? days ago where I got lost and almost died.

I wasn't worried about that. I could find my way back.

But was she going to divide the cabin in half? Her on her side, me on mine? Or was she just going to give me the cabin and sleep outside? Or strike that: she didn't sleep ... was she going to stay outside because she didn't trust herself with me anymore? or at all ever, anyway?

What was the point of that? She needed me, and I ...

I needed her.

It hurt for her to ... pull away like that. It hurts. It hurt me.

She turned back to me, looking at me, looking for something inside me ... for her? for me?

"Yeah," she sighed. "I can try."

She smiled a sad, apologetic smile.

"Okay," I said, relief flooding me.

Then I thought of something. "That's what adults do, right? They try, right?"

She nodded dispiritedly. "Yeah," she said, "they try."

"God, Rosalie!" I said, "what is it? What is it, please?"

It seemed like everything just left her, leaving this broken creature in front of me. It was just so wrong. She was the most beautiful, the most powerful ... thing, being, creature ... no: _person!_ ... I had ever been around in my life, and it was a crime seeing her so low.

"I just ..." she began brokenly, "I'm just too ..."

She sighed. "Everything, Lizzie, everything I've done, everything I wanted to do ... it's all gone now."

She turned away: "It's all gone, and I'm just too bleak for words."

I blinked.

"What did you just call me?" I whispered.

She turned back to me.

She smiled sadly. "Lizzie," she said. "I called you by name."

She touched my cheek, then said quietly: "Elizabeth Lucia Hale. Your name. I wanted to give it to you when you earned it, baby, but ..."

She looked down. "You didn't earn anything from me. You surpassed me. I thought it was Lucy at first, Lucia, so beautiful, so clear and bright, so you, ... but you told me differently yourself. So ..."

She smiled to me. "It's yours, if you want it, and ..."

She looked away. "And if you don't..."

She couldn't even shrug.

"'Elizabeth Lucia ... _Hale'?" _I repeated, dumbfounded. I was tasting the words, trying to grasp them as mine, as ... _me, _and utterly failing, in shock of it all.

She turned back to me and nodded. "Caught that, did you, Lizzie?"

She said that word so easily, as if she had said to to herself when she looked at me hundreds, no, _thousands_ of times.

She smiled.

I gasped. "'Elizabeth Lucia _Hale'_ like, _Hale, _like in ..."

She lifted her hand to my forehead, oh, so gently, and brushed back an imaginary strand of hair.

Or a real strand of hair. I didn't know. I couldn't feel her hand on my head, nor the clothes on my body, nor the snow beneath my feet.

"I never had a sister ..." she whispered.

There was such hope in her eyes. Such utter helpless hope, such terrible longing.

"I-... I..." I looked at her. She became really blurry really quickly ... did you ever notice that? "I n-never had a sister, t-too," I said.

She smiled wistfully at me.

And I realized, again, that she couldn't cry.

Her lips twitched for a second. She said: "Hungry?"

I think I said something.

She put her finger to my cheek. I felt an icicle burn me where her finger rested.

She brought her finger to her mouth, breathed in the scent of my tear, then her lips kissed her finger.

And her eyes blazed golden, like the sun.

And her pupils disappeared into two tiny pinholes in the sea that were her golden irises.

"Me, too," she said softly, then turned, deliberately, her whole body groaning, although silently, for me, and gently took my hand, and started walking back toward the cabin.

* * *

**A/N:** Happy Easter.

Okay, I have no idea what the Hell got into either of these two. This was supposed to be a nice, safe little academic chapter about ... well, about nothing at all other than phenomenological theories, and then ... Fine. _Fine._ Whatever. They want to do this, they want _equals-_equals, then I'll just have to ... God, I'm in so much trouble now! They had _roles, _see? But ever since I took that three year break, they're like: "No, we're not going to play that safe little Stockholm captor-captive game, anymore, geophf: you have to write us as living, breathing (human-vampire) characters now, so deal." Fine. Whatever.

Yeah, and the name. Love me, hate me: don't say I haven't given you fair warning, and in two books, too. Or, do say that. I'm in a world of hurt already here, so bring. it. on. It'll help you enjoy your _Schadenfreude_ all the more.

Oh, and wait 'til we get to the _really_ interesting parts back in the cabin tonight and tomorrow night. ... Rosalie takes a brush and paints a white line down the center of the cabin. The 'your side/my side' line will work really well, now, won't it.

Joy.


	67. Sisters: I — Picking Flowers and Fights

**Chapter Summary:** What do sisters do? I had no idea. I never had a sister. Nor did Rosalie, so I guess she didn't know either. But I guess, watching us, it became pretty clear: they go skipping across the snow, right? Yeah, right. They fight a lot, too.

* * *

"Sisters?" I asked quietly, walking beside her.

I couldn't believe it. My whole body tingled in a funny way when I said the word to her.

She turned to me and smiled. "I thought you wanted an uneventful walk home..." she chided gently.

"'Home'?" I repeated.

Everything seemed new. Like I had never been here before until this moment, or like I had been here forever, and here was where I was meant to be, and I just got it.

"We're going home," I said. "To our home ... like, as sisters?"

I heard the wonder in my voice.

Rosalie looked at me as we walked, me, this time, floating above the snow, not noticing it.

She snickered. _"Somebody_ certainly is feeling euphoric," she remarked wryly.

She turned her gaze back to the path-no-path through the forest, a smug look on her face.

I bit my lip, hiding my own smile.

"You look happy, too..." I whined.

But I was glad for it. She had just looked so despondent before, and seeing her now, pleased with herself and my silly little awe, made me so incredibly happy.

"I didn't say it was a bad thing, Lizzie," she reproached mildly.

I stopped.

She sensed this. She stopped, too, and turned back to me.

"What is it?" she asked, concern filling her voice and her face.

"You just called me 'Lizzie,'" I said, and as I said that word, that name, I felt my toes curling, and a delightful, warm feeling suffused my body. "You called me 'Lizzie,' like it's my name, like I'm your sister!" I squealed.

"Hm," Rosalie said, her eyes grinning as her mouth frowned thoughtfully. Then she said. "Mmhm, yes," she said thoughtfully. "Yes, I did."

She smirked.

I started to roll my eyes, but then she shrieked.

"What?" I screamed, shocked and surprised.

"Look, Lizzie!" She fell to her knees. "Look, this is _snow!_ Can you believe it? It's _snow! _Oh, how _wondrous!"_

I felt my eyes narrow, and I harrumphed.

"No! You're not getting it!" she exclaimed, then got up and rushed right past me. "Is this ...?"

She was looking at the tree a few feet behind. "Is this a tree?" she whispered, her voice awed.

"O tree!" she exclaimed, then wrapped her arms around it, hugging it like it was some long lost ... something or other, and now I was getting really pissed at her mocking me.

"Rosalie!" I shouted in irritation. "Okay, fine! Enough already!"

She looked over to me from the tree, still in her embrace, her eyes dancing.

Then she smiled.

"No," she said. "Still not quite enough yet."

I was about to say something really intelligent, like: _'Huh?'_ when she blurred toward me. I didn't have time to react. I didn't have time to gasp, nor to have the air leave my lungs in a whoosh.

All I could do was hold onto her as we _flew_ through the forest at speeds impossible to comprehend, faster than a race-horse, faster than a motorcar, faster than anything I knew.

She ran, me in her embrace, the forest flying past us in a blur, and I remembered running like this, me, wrapped in her arms, and her, carrying me as if I weighed nothing, the day she stole me away from my home in Ekalaka, and now, again, too, right now.

I remember her running. And her smiling, her smiling with delight and joy and an irrepressible exuberance.

And I looked up at her face, and saw the face of a god, untouched by mere mortal concerns, like when to eat and when to go to the potty, and what college you wanted to go to if you were smart and had money, and otherwise what socks needed darning and what to prepare for supper then when to do the dishes. No, she wasn't toying with me, or maybe she was, but she really did look at the snow as if it were the first snow in the world, she really just did hug that tree as if it were the only tree in the world. The World Tree, and she and it were one, and she admired it and gloried in that moment.

Just as she ran now, and exulted in her running.

And then, as fast she ran, she stopped. We had been going through the forest for seconds on seconds piling to minutes, trees whipping past us ...

And now the forest stopped, for we had stopped.

She set me down gently, providing a steadying hand on my arm. I needed it. You know how when you're swimming in the public pool for a while and you step over the edge and try to walk toward the girls' locker? You know that feeling you have of terror that your legs are going to give out, feeling gravity again for the first time in a while, and you're afraid that you'll collapse and hit your head on the concrete floor, slide back into the pool and drown?

You know that feeling, every time you get out of the pool?

And, no, I'm not paranoid, thanks for not asking. Nor (too much of) a klutz, either. I had ballet lessons when I was a little girl, and everything!

... for all the good that it did me.

Well, anyway, Rosalie's hand on my arm was a welcome steadying presence after the minutes of floating, flying backwards in her arms through the forest. I wondered how many miles we had come.

But this thought went right out of my head when I turned and looked toward what Rosalie was looking at.

There was a little natural clearing, and in that clearing there was this gigantic bush, two-, no, three-times taller than me, with fleshy leaves of a green color so dark to be almost black.

It was right on the cusp of blooming, there were blush of a light white-pink color everywhere, all over it, high and low, peeking out amongst its leaves. There must have been hundreds of buds on that one solitary bush. Some of the buds had opened up to very delicate flowers the size of my fist: white flowers with the tips of the petals stained with a breath of pink.

If I didn't have my golden-haired, okay ... sister ...

_Oh, my God! Rosalie's my sister! Rosalie says I'm her sister!_

I felt giddy and faint and short of breath, just thinking that.

Well, if _she_ weren't standing right beside me, looking at the bush, I would've said it was the most beautiful thing in the world: strong, stark slashes of branches with meaty dark green leaves with so many buds and a spray of flowers floating, diaphanously in that dark green sea.

But compared to Rosalie ...? I didn't even need to look at her. I actually didn't want to. She wanted to show me this, so I didn't want to compare it to her: that would degrade it and insult her.

"Everything is beautiful," she said softly, next to me, "if you take the time to admire it. The snow, a tree, a rhododendron bush, ... a name."

I sighed. "Rosalie," I replied just as softly, but with just a mite of irritation, "hush!"

Nothing like a little teaching moment from Ms. Pithy to spoil the mood!

Rosalie hushed, then glided silently past me, right up to the bush. I wondered if I hurt her feelings? But she didn't look hurt nor displeased, and, as if to confirm this, she turned back to me, and smiled slightly, peacefully, even, and seemed to call me over to her with her eyes.

I walked up beside her and looked at the bush, taking it in. It was even bigger up close, filling my field of view.

"It's beautiful," I whispered.

"Yes," she answered quietly, and this time simply: just that, no lecture and no irony in her voice toward me for finally seeing the beauty she was trying to describe a second ago.

Something about the flowers seemed familiar. I looked more closely at one of the blossoms.

"Oh!" I exclaimed.

Rosalie turned to look at me quizzically.

"These are the flowers you brought the other day, weren't they!"

That's where she got those flowers from! They were so pretty!

Rosalie tilted her head to one side slightly, as if she were perplexed at what I said.

"The other day?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, "you know, the ones you brought when you brought those blue berries, remember?"

She smiled warmly at me. "Baby, that was yesterday morning."

"Yesterday morning?" I asked surprised.

It couldn't have been yesterday! It felt like _ages_ ago!

Rosalie pressed her lips together, suppressing her amusement. "Yes," she said, "it was yesterday."

"Oh," I said, amazed. That was only yesterday she brought the flowers for ...

For, well, not me, she said, but to brighten up the cabin.

They surely did. The forest floor was white with snow, and the sky was clear above, but it was a bright darkness in the forest, if you know what I mean: everything was bright during the day, but the trees gave the air a heaviness, and seemed to suck the light out of everything, so there was a silence that had a weight to it, making even the day seem somehow dark. Not scary dark, but it was there, this feeling.

But the flowers on the bush, even in mid-February, gave the feeling that Spring was coming, and was even just around the corner. In the silence of the trees of the forest, this bush, just beginning to bloom, gave a lightness and peace in the almost oppressive silence of the forest.

I remembered my dream of the rose, and these were so different from that one, but I still wanted to go up to the bush and touch a flower.

And remembering the dream, though, I was suddenly embarrassed again. Was Rosalie the protector of these flowers, too? Would she push me away if I tried to approach them? Would she throw me across the forest like she did earlier this morning?

I felt nervous, wanting to approach the bush, but now scared to.

"Go ahead," Rosalie said quietly. It was if she knew me like her own sis...

Well, like her own sister.

I blushed.

"I'm shy," I whispered back.

Rosalie was quiet for a second, then she said "I know." Then she added reassuringly: "It's okay."

I looked at her, and I felt myself biting my lip, and I knew I was blushing, but I didn't know why.

Or maybe I did know why. I felt like I was breaking a rule, like I wasn't supposed to be here, for some reason, like this was her find, and she was sharing it with me, something very private and personal to her, so I felt like I could look from a distance, but I couldn't touch, ... or I could, and so easily, but somehow I felt I shouldn't.

It was if there were a spell over this whole little clearing, her private grove, and my intrusion would disturb the magic of the place.

Rosalie smirked at me, but not meanly. No: it was affectionate, gentle and understanding.

_God! _I wish she were like this before! It was like night and day, and I so, so preferred this breaking dawn after the long dark night of her harshness.

I guess I was looking at her too long, thinking these thoughts, because she very gently turned her body, nudging me forward toward the bush with her shoulder and arm.

I was pushed forward almost into the bush.

I looked at it. It was overwhelming. If it were a creature it could enfulge me in a bear-hug, and I mean head to toe, wrapping around me. It could fall over the top of me and cover both my front side and back completely, it was that tall and imposing.

It was silly of me, being scared of a plant, and I _wasn't! ..._

... But I was. And I felt a bit shy around it and around Rosalie. The last time I was in front of a flower bush, I knew I was doing something very, very bad by wanting the touch the flower, by wanting to breathe it in, and then when I did do that little illicit move, wanting to taste its nectar.

I knew I shouldn't be doing any of that, but that's exactly what I did. I couldn't stop myself, and because I didn't, I was punished. I was ejected right from my dream, right into Rosalie's very reproving arms as I had to be carried to the potty and had to have my panties changed and why were they wet? _I don't know!_

I don't know. All I knew was that they were, and I wanted to die from the shame and embarrassment of it.

And here we were, almost in the exact same scenario, Rosalie looking over me, just like she was, invisibly, in my dream, and me in front of a flower blush.

And you wonder why I'm scared and shy?

There was a blossom, right in front of me, right at head-height, and I was tempted to lean forward, to touch it, to hold it. I looked back at Rosalie for confirmation and understanding. She simply smiled, watching me. So I looked back at the flower. It was beautiful. It was so beautiful, so light and ephemeral. A delicate flower on a very sturdy bush.

I reached up to touch it, but my mitten looked bulky next to it, so I withdrew my hand and jerked off the mitten impatiently and tucked it under my arm.

Again, I reached forward, tentatively, and pulled the flower down toward my face.

Just by that slight, light pull, the flower disintegrated in my hand, and the petals fell like a soft snow, drifting away from me as they fell toward the ground.

I gasped, and again withdrew my hand hastily, as if it had been stung.

_I knew it!_ I cursed to myself. I just knew it was wrong to reach out. I knew I would ruin everything!

Rosalie, silent as the forest, was by my side. I couldn't look at her. I cringed in anticipation of her rage at my clumsiness.

"You have to hold the flower as if it were I holding you," she said softly. Not at a trace of anger in her voice.

She reached up, reaching her hand around the flower and grasping the stem of it lightly and pulled the branch down to me, the entire bush bending in submission to her will.

I looked over to her, confirming that she was giving me another chance after I so thoroughly screwed up the first time.

She was. She held the flower, the branch, the whole bush, it seemed, out to me for me to have and to do whatever I wanted to with it.

I looked at the flower in her hand, and I looked at her.

And again, I saw that they were one and the same. The flower wasn't a rose, but it was pure white where the sweet, girlish pink didn't stain the tips of the petals, and it had an ethereal, ephemeral beauty to it, unearthly, even, that only she had.

I grasped the flower by the stem, right next to her fingers, and she gently released her grip.

I brought the flower to my face. It was hard, because the branch was unyielding in its innate strength to return to its original position, but I held it there, and lifted up my face, and breathed it in, closing my eyes.

Talk about anticlimax!

I thought the flower would smell like Rosalie — you know? — like the sweet scent of rose or of honeysuckle, both smells now so intoxicating to me. But it smelled of nothing at all, even when I breathed it in more deeply, I couldn't make out anything. It just smelled like nothing!

And I thought: what a waste! All this beauty and no smell at all to go along with it, whereas I thought that it should be what an enticing perfume should smell like. But nothing!

I was going to let the stem go in disappointment, but as I was extending my arm, I looked at it again.

It was really, really beautiful.

A thought came into my head.

Rosalie had given me ... well, actually, not given _me, _but she brought flowers to the cabin yesterday, she said.

And what had I given to her?

I pulled off my other mitten from my hand with my teeth and let it drop onto the snow, then, using both hands, I bent the stem back against the branch.

It _snapped_ with surprising ease, and I was holding in my hand a flower nestled in several dark green leaves.

Quickly, before I lost my nerve, I turned to Rosalie and extended the flower to her.

"For me?" I heard her ask in a surprised whisper.

Of course, I didn't see her reaction, because my own audacity caused me to blush pretty hard, and I was looking away in embarrassment, feeling awkward and inept.

I didn't react. I just held out the flower to her.

I felt a gentle hand take the flower from me.

"Thank you, Lizzie," she said softly.

I felt a warm glow fill my belly at the affection I heard in her voice.

I looked over to her, and saw her looking at me with a cautious air, as if I were dangerous, or bold, or maybe ... I don't know ... maybe she thought I would disappear or maybe I was being impolite or ...

I just didn't know. Did sisters do this? That is, show affection for each other? I thought maybe they did, but maybe I was stepping out of bounds for Proper Miss Rosalie? I couldn't tell.

She had to know she had my admiration and respect, albeit sometimes (very) grudgingly given, but ...

But did she know? She seemed surprised at my offered token.

Or maybe she was surprised at the way I was giving it, bumbling, little, shy me.

Or maybe she was surprised that _I_ was giving it, and not ...

... And not, well, Edward. He liked to give flowers, apparently. He gave me flowers when I was sick that day at home.

Did he ever give her flowers?

"Hey."

My reflections were interrupted by her quiet voice.

Rosalie was looking at me regretfully.

"Help me pick some buds?" she asked.

"Okay ...?" I said, wondering at her sad tone.

She smiled at me, comprehending my unasked question. She shrugged. "This flower won't last on the trip back, the wind will tear it apart."

"Oh," I said. I didn't think of that.

"I could ..." I offered. "I could hold it for you, and, you know, block the wind from it with my body."

Rosalie shook her head. "'t's very kind of you, Lizzie, but ..."

She touched my cheek affectionately, and her lips twitched.

"Everything I touch dies."

I saw a bitterness in her look, a self-loathing that I recognized right away: she knew herself, and she hated herself for what she was.

She handed the flower back to me, and I was shaking my head 'no,' but she took my hand, extended my fingers, and closed them around my stem.

I felt the blood drain from my face, and I felt sick to my stomach.

"You're not ..." a voice came from somewhere, I don't know where, because I couldn't feel my mouth. "You're not gonna take m-my ... the flower?"

Rosalie looked at me with pity in her eyes. And now I saw how she said she couldn't take anybody's pity, especially not Esmé's, especially not mine, because her look was killing me with her sympathy.

I didn't want her sympathy.

I _hated_ it.

I wanted her ... I wanted her ...

I was so hurt, I couldn't think.

"Hold it for me?" she asked sadly.

And I said, "Ohkay," even though it wasn't okay, but my mouth moved and the word was said that I didn't want to say. I wanted to say that it wasn't okay, and I wanted to scream, and to cry, and to throw the flower onto the snow and jump up and down on it in my fury and ask her if she wanted me to hold that.

She was rejecting it and rejecting me, and I wanted no part of it, and no part of her, nor her sympathy, nor her friendship, nor ... what did you call it? 'sistership'?

If she were gonna treat me like this, just reject me like that, then she could do exactly what I wanted to do to that flower, and be open and honest about it, just throw me down on the snow and step all over me until I was nothing but a bloody pulp, because at least she was being honest with me, and not this fake self-loathing kindness I was getting instead ... 'Everything I touch dies'? What kinda line was that? It let her opt out, and what recourse did it give me? besides none?

So all I could do is stand there like an idiot and say 'okay,' and because why?

Because I knew exactly why.

Because she was right. Because I was a little chicken-shit. I was a _scared_ little chicken-shit, too scared to stand up for herself, too scared to appear impolite, so I had to take the flower back and — what did she say? — 'hold it for her'? Yeah, right. Hold it for her, because she wanted no part of it, and that was the real reason, and we both knew it.

But she was being 'nice' to me, and I had to play the part and be 'nice' back or else I would be the jerk, making a fuss and being a meanie for raising a stink about her giving back the flower.

I guess, if I were smart, I should've called 'no give-backs!' when I gave her the flower, and when she took it. That is: if I were smart, and wise to the world, knowing that people would do this to me, take something I offered, scared to, but did anyway, take it, and then ...

And then take it back.

But I wasn't smart to the world, and how cruel it could be, even if it wasn't personally against me. I guess that's why I never ventured out into it, because I somehow instinctively knew it would be out to get me if I ever did. So why even bother to try, when you knew that even just trying would be punished.

I looked over to Rosalie. She had turned to the bush and was reaching toward a bud. She looked back toward me as she pulled the bud down toward her, and she waited.

I looked down at the flower, and I was filled with conflicting emotions. I wanted to throw the flower down, hard, and just stand there and pout.

But it was her flower. And it was so beautiful. And it was her look to me.

And it was so beautiful, in the way she didn't plead with her eyes. In the way that she did.

I sighed, and gently placed the flower on my mittens in the snow. It didn't disintegrate, like the other one did so easily, and I didn't know whether to feel disappointed or relieved.

I trudged up next to Rosalie and began snapping buds off the bush by their stems, but I didn't look at her. I couldn't.

"I don't buy your line, Rosalie Hale," I murmured as I worked.

Rosalie pulled down the next bud for me. "I'm not selling a line for you to buy," she replied so calmly.

I glared at her. Which she totally ignored. Which miffed me. She pulled down the next branch with a bunch of buds on them. I resumed working. How many of these did she want? Was she going to make a bouquet? for whom?

I saw green thinking of her having _me_ pick these buds for _her_ to give to _someone else._ Someone she _really liked_ and wouldn't say, 'oh, thanks but no thanks' to.

That was an unproductive thought. Except for my stomach acid. I felt like I was gonna puke.

I clamped my jaw down hard and swallowed.

I bore down and said quietly and evenly, "I just don't believe you is all. I thought you said not to denigrate myself, and I thought I told you the same thing, and I thought ..."

I paused, looking at the bud in front of me, collecting myself before I got carried away in a wash of emotion. I felt Rosalie's eyes on me.

"I thought," I resumed, "that you would, like, ..."

Collecting myself wasn't helping. I swallowed.

"I thought that now we're sisters, you'd be, ..." I took a deep breath, then expelled these words in a rush: "I thought you would at least be honest with me now."

I shrugged.

And hated myself for saying aloud what I felt. For not being strong enough just to eat my bitter words.

I snapped the bud off the branch gently and added it to the bunch under my arm.

I reached for the next one, but Rosalie's hand stilled mine, and the branch was gone, released from her grip and springing back up into the bush above our heads.

I had to look at her now, didn't I?

She looked so sad. "Sweetie, I am being honest with you." She shrugged. "I'm not denigrating myself, you have to believe me ..." She paused and reconsidered. "No," she said, "no, you don't have to believe me. I'm just stating facts, there's no belief necessary."

I looked at her, and I shook my head. "Rosalie," I sighed. "I believe that you believe what you're saying. But I don't believe it. You can see yourself as this ..." I waved at her. "... monster..."

She interjected. "Baby, because I am."

I stopped and crossed my arms, glaring at her.

She stopped, too, regarding me coolly.

Then she looked contrite.

"What?" she asked.

"You finished?" I hissed.

Rosalie looked down sadly, "Yes, Lizzie, I'm finished."

"Good," I answered curtly, "because you say you're some monster, but you're _not, _okay? I _know_ you, okay? And I'm not going to listen to you say that you are any more. You don't want my flower, then _fine!"_ I snarled that last bit, not feeling fine about it at all. "But don't make up some pleasant lie about it so my feelings won't get hurt, thinking I'm too stupid to figure it out, okay? Because, guess what? I will, ... I mean, I _did, _and that just hurts more, knowing you're _lying_ to me, okay?"

I finished, panting, glaring furiously at her.

She glared right back.

Give it about 20 years or so, and it would be so hilarious: two girls, arms crossed, glaring at each other in a snowy clearing in the forest next to a flowering bush _in Winter!_

It was if we had nothing better to do than be angry at each other. And over a stupid flower that I gave her, too.

Rosalie visibly collected herself, turning her harsh gaze away from me and spoke very softly to me, as if her words were for only me and the bush, not even for the trees nearby.

"I'm very glad, Lizzie," she began slowly, "that you believe that I believe what I say, and ..."

And ... she stopped.

"And?" I prompted angrily.

She shook her head. "Just that, sweetie, I'm very glad you believe me."

"You don't look glad," I stated the obvious fact coolly.

Her face turned into a grimace of pain that others who didn't know her would call a smile.

"I don't like being called a liar," she said quietly. "I am one, Lizzie, and I do lie, and all the time. My very appearance is a façade, a falsehood, ..."

My hands fell to my side as I prepared to give a stinging retort.

I couldn't believe this fight: _'I'm bad,' she says, and 'No, you're not!' I shout._

As she says: ridiculous!

Her hand flashed up in a halting motion.

"Please let me finish," she said quietly. "And I could so easily lie to you, and tell you sweet, easy, credible lies and suck you right into your doom. I can so easily placate you, lull you into lowering your guard, as all my kind does, and then ..."

She shrugged. "And then, it's all over. But what's the point of that, Lizzie?" she added, her anger flaring. "What's the point of lying to you now when all that does is exactly what you say? I have _nothing_ to gain by lying to you now, and everything to lose."

She became calm.

Then she continued, "So when I try to tell you a truth, and you call me a liar for it ..."

_"'Everything I touch dies'?"_ I said incredulously.

"Yes," she answered simply.

"That doesn't sound like a truth to me, Rosalie," I said. "That sounds like a very convenient way to push me away because I just got a _little too close to you_ for your comfort, didn't I? And now you have to find a way, _any_ way to put that distance between us again, right?" I asked. Then demanded angrily: _"Right?"_

Rosalie just shook her head sadly.

"That's not dead," I said coldly, pointing at the bush behind her that she so recently grasped branch after branch of.

She didn't look back at it.

"These," I said, looking down at my arms.

Then stopped. Oops! I had let the buds fall to the ground in my anger, so I continued, pointing down to them at my feet instead: "These aren't dead."

Then I looked around for my mittens, seeing them a few paces behind me. I saw the flower on top of them, still in full bloom, obviously.

I jerked my chin back toward it. "That isn't dead, and you touched that, Rosalie." Then I added empathetically: "You _held_ it."

"Yes," she said. "All true. Now."

Her admission didn't sound like her giving in, it sounded ominous.

"So ...?" I said, glaring at her.

She sighed. "So?" she asked.

"So," I said, "I'm not from the 'Show Me' state but ..." I glared significantly.

She just glared right back.

My temper was going to get me into big trouble one of these days, wasn't it?

"You say it's a fact, Rosalie," I said, trembling, "well, I just showed you three facts that doesn't jibe what you say. So, _show me,_ Rosalie. Prove it, or take it back, and just be honest with me, okay? You don't want what I can ..."

I broke off.

"You know," I said sadly. "I was just so happy that I could give you something, you know? And it was nothing. And even more than that, you had to help me to get it so that I could even offer it to you, and then you just ..."

I swallowed.

"And then you just give it right back, like it's ... like I'm ..."

I couldn't continue.

But that didn't stop my little motor mouth.

I was looking down at the ground. "I know it was _nothing, _okay, Rosalie, but it was all I could give, and ..."

Strong, powerful arms wrapped around me.

I wanted to push them away so badly. I wanted to push her away from me. I wanted her away from me in my misery. Why did she always have to see me so weak? It shamed me.

"Don't ..." I stuttered. "Don't sh-shadyfroidy me, Rosalie. Don't hold me unless you mean it."

She didn't let me go.

"You know," she said. "I risked everything, too, baby. You gave me everything you could, and I hurt you. You know how? Because I am what I am."

Her words were supposed to be comforting? She hurts me because that's the way she is?

That's the way _she thinks she is!_ I screamed in my mind.

But I was comforted, by her, by her embrace, by her soft, hurtful words.

"But when I said your name, you know what I hoped? Nothing. No, I couldn't hope anything. And why? Because what I expected from you, seeing me, what I am, I expected you either to laugh in my face, or to spit in it, and then tell me, and what I am, to go exactly where I deserve to be. That's what I expected."

She was silent for a moment. Pausing. Collecting her thoughts.

"What if I did that?" I asked, my heart beating again in trepidation.

"What if you did?" she asked back quietly, holding me so completely in her embrace that the universe was just us and nothing else.

"What would've you done?" I asked into her shoulder.

"I would've taken you back to the cabin and given you lunch," she said, matter-of-factly.

My eyebrows creased at that.

"And then ...?" I asked.

"Well," she said, nonplussed, "then quiet time, then supper, then bed, then the next day."

I voiced my question: "You wouldn't have ... well, been angry or ... sad? or tried to get back at me for saying 'no'?"

Not that I could imagine that possibility. She needed me. I needed her. We were sisters. I didn't realize it like that. I'm not smart, like Rosalie. Nor that generous, that I would've offered that, if I were in her position.

I wonder how Rosalie would react to me thinking she was generous.

And she was scared, thinking I would spit on her generosity?

She really, really was hurting.

"Baby," she said softly, "no. You are mine. Just that. I have responsibilities, and personal feelings have nothing to do with that."

"So you would be angry?" I asked, pulling back a little, searching her face.

She shook her head, her eyes so, so sad. "No," she said, "resigned."

I rested my head back into her shoulder.

"You are amazing," I whispered.

"... And a liar?" she asked sadly.

I was quiet, in her arms, and I bit my lip in shame.

"... It's just that, ..." I said hesitantly, "I'm not, and ... okay, I understand that, that..."

"Shhhh," she sighed.

"You still don't believe me, even now," she said in disappointed tones. "And that's fine, ..."

I squirmed in her arms.

"Shhhh," she said again soothingly, "but the sad thing for me is that you don't believe in yourself."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Lizzie," she said softly, but I heard a decision being made.

"I will show you."

I pulled back, and she let me go at the same time.

"What?" I said, disbelievingly.

"Gather your flower buds, fair maiden," she almost sang the words, then speaking more prosaically: "We'll go back to the cabin, and I'll show you my ..."

She looked away, losing all sense of lightness her tone had previously had.

"My Midas touch."

She smiled mirthlessly at her hollow joke.


	68. Yes

**Chapter Summary: **The way Rosalie said 'yes' like that. I wanted that. I so wanted that my body ached. I wanted to look into her eyes and feel connected, just like this, and feel her _very being_ say 'yes' like that to me.

* * *

I appraised her. She seemed serious when she said she would show me her 'Midas touch,' her 'death touch,' but she was always saying so many things, and how was it possible to get to everything she said, unless you lived forever, like her.

I didn't have that luxury.

"No," I said.

She smiled faintly at me.

"Why?" she asked gently.

"You show me right here and right now, Rosalie Hale." I was firm.

She smiled again. "Why?" she asked. Always gentle with me now.

Was I that close? I didn't think I was feeling hysterical.

"I'm not gonna let you distract me with something else, and say 'oh, tomorrow, oh, tomorrow!' when you _don't_ show me why my name isn't 'Lillian' and you _don't_ ..."

I paused.

"Shoot!" I scowled angrily.

"What?" she asked concerned.

"Now I don't even remember what the other thing that you were going to tell me today! See?" I almost shouted in frustration. "You delay and you get away with everything because you know I'll forget! Well, I'm not letting that happen this time. You show me right now!"

She shook her head solemnly. "No," she said calmly.

My eyes narrowed at her. "'No,' huh? Chickening out, are you?"

I didn't want to sound bitter.

But I just didn't know how to sound anything else.

Besides betrayed, maybe. I was hoping she wasn't lying to me, but now with her refusing to back up what she said, I just couldn't help think that ...

"No, baby, not here, and not now," she said evenly.

She didn't even care that I called her a chicken, or a quitter, or anything. She could call me a chicken-shit, and that stung — and maybe it stung because I knew she was right — but whenever I called her anything, she just didn't care. She didn't defend herself. Even worse, she just ignored my accusation as if I hadn't spoken at all. It was like what I said was beneath her. She wasn't a chicken just because she wasn't, and she knew it, and no matter what I said, it just didn't matter, because she knew who she was, right to her core.

But... Shoot! I just hoped she wasn't lying to me, is all. That's all I was hoping. Was that too much to ask? Too much to demand, right now? I didn't think so.

"Why not?"

She was calm when she asked her 'why'-questions. But I wasn't. My voice quavered.

"I seem to remember someone being cold, tired, and hungry," she replied evenly. "I don't need you colder, more tired, and hungrier than you are now."

"So you're just gonna let routine carry me away from the truth," I shot back fiercely.

"Baby," she sighed. "What I will show you will take more than an hour. We do it here, you watching me, the cold seeps into tired, hungry you, and what am I left to care for? Hm? Again? I thought we could move past that now. Let's get you back inside and fed. I am what I am wherever I am. I can show you there as well as here, but there you can see this, _and_ eat and be warm."

She paused, letting her words sink in.

"What do you say?" she offered reasonably.

I glared at her. I had been played to agreeing with her again.

"More than an hour, huh?" I confirmed suspiciously.

She smirked. "I just so love repeating things I've said, as emphasis and repetition obviously makes a statement _more _true."

She rolled her eyes sarcastically.

I frowned. "You sure do love a lot of things, don't cha, Rosalie?"

She glared at me.

I felt suddenly vulnerable. "You will show me?"

"Yes."

No hesitancy.

"You promise?"

Now she frowned at me. "I already gave you my promise, Lizzie."

"That still ..." I began surprised. "You still have to do that promise?"

"Circumstances don't alter a promise, Lizzie," she said, "if they did, then it wasn't a promise after all, was it?"

This surprised me. I thought that ... well, I mean, she promised me that she would tell me, or try to tell me, when she was going to kill me, but that was before this ... but the way she promised, so seriously... did she see this happening? so far into the future?

I suddenly realized that she must have. She must have already been thinking of my name when she made that promise, and she must have already seen us being right here, and right now, and making that promise, knowing that she'd have to honor it, even now. Even if it didn't matter any more. The world had moved on, but she didn't.

"But how long do you have to keep it?" I asked her.

She smiled sadly. "Forever and ever, baby. Forever and ever."

I tried to swallow what she said.

I couldn't.

"Even after I'm dead and gone?" I asked. "You have to keep your promise to me even after I'm dead and gone?"

"Yes."

She said it so simply.

"I wish I had asked for a different promise," I said sadly.

It now seemed pointless, her promise.

"Like?" she asked easily.

"Well, ..." I began.

She held up her hand. I stopped, then she shook her head.

"Lizzie," she said sadly.

I waited, then I asked defensively, "What?"

"You wanted to trade one temporal promise for another just now. After I show you this, honoring that one promise, what good would it be? A temporal promise? Lizzie," she chided gently. "You are not thinking of the consequences, you just ask for a promise. But that's all you really need to do: just ask, right? You don't need a promise if you get what you ask for, and if you don't get what you ask for, then a promise, consequently broken, doesn't make it all better. No, it only makes it worse. If you want a promise, ask for something eternal, but then why ask for an eternal promise when you are mortal? Icarus' wings brought him to the Sun only to be burnt by it, then to fall into the sea, drowning in its depths. Do you see what I'm saying?"

Rosalie was that Sun, and I was burnt by it.

"Yeah," I cast my eyes down. "I don't need a promise, I just need to ask."

"Close enough," she said easily.

I _tsk_ed.

"What?" she asked softly.

"It just feels better if you'd promise," I said petulantly.

"Lizzie," Rosalie said, calling me from myself.

I looked at her sadly.

"It only feels better because no one's 'yes' means 'yes' anymore," she explained, then implored quietly: "Let my 'yes' mean 'yes,' and you won't need a promise to feel better, you'll feel just right saying what you mean, then doing what you say."

"So you're gonna do that?" I asked humbly.

"Yes."

I think this was the first time I noticed that when anybody said 'yes' it was if their whole body was saying a qualified and hesitant 'maybe,' instead.

But when Rosalie said 'yes,' her eyes said 'yes,' her heart said 'yes,' her whole _being_ said 'yes.'

I wanted to believe her. I wanted so hard to believe her.

I realized that I wanted to believe her more than I had ever wanted anything. My whole life was nothing. It was just ... pointless. I get up, fix breakfast, I went to school for a while, then I switched to the courthouse, but that was just it. Then I'd go home, and what? Pa and I'd do something, but mostly not, I'd just do homework or read, mostly, after supper then bed.

I had never wanted anything, because there was nothing to want.

But now Rosalie was saying 'yes,' and I _so wanted_ her 'yes' to be 'yes.' I mean, I really wanted that.

Because, and here was the killer, if her 'yes' wasn't 'yes,' ...

Then there was no point, right? There was no point if your hope ... just wasn't. If your hope was a sham, then you may as well go back to what you were doing until someone noticed you had stopped moving because you were dead, and then they would bury you as they scratched their heads trying to come up with something nice to say about you at your funeral if only they could remember you at all.

Those were my alternatives. I could hope, I could so want to reach for my hope, or I could go back to my nothing existence.

And that hurt, realizing that I was given a choice, that I could choose hope if I wanted to, because ...

Because Rosalie was right again, there was not one other person I knew back where I came from, back where she took me from, that even knew they had that choice. I mean ...

I mean, even Pa. He just did what he did, because he did it every day, and that was his whole life.

That's what his whole life summed up to: just doing his job. That's what everybody's whole life summed up to.

But Rosalie said 'yes,' and if her 'yes' meant 'yes,' ... I mean, if it _really_ meant 'yes,' then ...

Then my life wouldn't be just being whatever it was I was doing, but it would mean I could really say something and really mean it.

And I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it scared the hell out of me: I liked everything ordered and predictable. But Rosalie was saying a 'yes' that promised a future than had absolutely nothing I could control nor expect, it promised a wide-open future, and that terrified me, because that meant I could say anything, and then anything would go, and how do you anchor that? You couldn't, unless ...

If Rosalie's 'yes' meant 'yes,' then that was the one sure thing in this world I could hold onto.

I locked eyes with hers, and said quietly, hopefully, "Okay."

She smiled faintly.

"Good girl," she said the words so free of care. "Now pick up the flower buds, and let's go."

I obeyed. I felt guilty for just following along. Was I being servile? But I suppose I dropped the blossoms, so I should pick them up, right?

I crouched down to the ground, and, forming a cradle with the crook of my arm, arranged each stem, one-by-one, into a small bunch in my arm.

When I stood, Rosalie was in front of me, my mittens in her hand, and on top of the mittens, the solitaire flower in full bloom.

I reached for it at the same time she delicately picked it up by the stem and laid it on top of my bundle in my arm.

I started to reach for the mittens, careful, so as not to upset the arrangement, but again Rosalie was anticipating me, and put my mittens on my hands for me, making sure my cold hands were now nice and cosy with a firm shove against my extended hands.

She surveyed me. "Ready?" she asked.

I nodded.

She hosted me up so effortlessly, Bel-... I mean, Lizzie-the-flower-bud, cradling me in her arms just as I cradled the buds and the one in bloom. I hunched my shoulder protectively over the flowers, so that I was chest-to-chest with Rosalie, forming a shield from the wind with my body.

She said, "And, ..."

And we were off, the trees whipping past us in a blur, the clearing and the bush disappearing into the distance of the forest as if it had never existed.


	69. Sisters: II — Not a Little Girl

**Chapter Summary: **Okay, we're here, two girls in chapter 69 of my journal. What do two girls alone in the woods do in chapter 69? Huh? Why are you looking at me like that? Girls talk! What were _you_ thinking, you pervs! And git your grubby hands off my very private journal!

* * *

"I'm not a girl, Rosalie," I said.

We were walking again. Rosalie had stopped her run right where she picked me up originally and dashed me to the flower bush, so we were walking back to the cabin now.

I suppose it was some sign of her trust in me? Her faith in me? That I could walk all the way to the potty and all the way back under my own power without dying or something?

Like, actually, that would be a first.

Rosalie was silent. Then I heard the smirk in her voice when she said: "I have observed first-hand evidence that you actually are a girl."

I scowled. "You _know _what I _mean!"_

Again, Rosalie's silence.

Have you ever watched grown-ups talk?

I have.

I say that, because, our talking? What we were doing right now? ... this isn't how grown-ups talk. No, what they do is they talk and talk and talk, and you're like, _Moooommmm! Let's goooooh! I'm boorred! of standing next to you in the grocery store! talking to your frieeeend!_

That's how they talk, or not really: one of them talks and talks and talks and the other one says, 'uh, huh?' and 'oh, really?' or slips in half-a-sentence edgewise while the first one just keeps of the spew of verbal diarrhea, pardon my French, regardless, and neither of them _listen_ to the other. No, one just talks and the other one just grins and bears it. And if they're really polite, they switch roles so they can do it all over again.

I mean that's how it is for people who do talk. And you know what I mean by that, girls, right? I mean: women. Do you see guys? Do you see them talk? I mean, like, _ever?_ No, what they do is just stand around at the bar with each other, beers in their hands, and look at the women talking, and wonder, idly, if the women are talking about _them!_ _As if!_ and then wonder why they all have to go to the bathroom together and wonder what they all do in there.

Well, no, duh! Talk more, of course! What else would a bunch of women do in the bathroom?

Men are so ...

I can't think of a nice word here.

Okay: solid, steady, stable, right, girls? What's another word for 'boring' or 'totally out of touch with their feelings'?

Oops, I was supposed to be being nice, wasn't I? That there was a big fail on my part. My bad, I'm sorry!

But my point was, and yes, guys, girls _do_ have a point when they talk! _Jeez!_ My _point was!_ that ... Rosalie doesn't talk like that. She doesn't dump, and she doesn't offer a bored 'uh, huh?' to everything I say.

She pauses. She listens. She thinks. She responds.

Not that I _like_ her response ... I mean: _ever._ But I have to give her this: every other conversation I've ever had in my _life_ was boring and predictable and pointless, and I could basically take both sides of the conversation, with me saying something, then being totally ignored with an 'uh, huh?' or 'oh, really?' or 'that's very nice' or 'shaddup, kid, adults are talking, go play with your friends.' 'But I don't have any friends,' I say. 'That's 'cause you hang out with adults and talk too much. People don't like a girl showing off her smarts, now go play dollies with the Kuntz and Swanson girls.' 'But I don't wanna play dollies, I wanna stay with Daddy and ...' 'Didn't I tell you to beat it, kid?'

Why did I just think 'Daddy'? I never called Pa 'Daddy.'

Huh. That's odd.

Anyway.

With Rosalie, I couldn't fill in the words for her. I mean, I'm getting to know her better now, and now I know some of the things she's going to say sometimes, like how she scolds me (which I don't like at all), or like how she says she's bad (which I don't like at all). But most of the times, words just come out of her mouth and they really shock me, because there was no way that I could see them coming, that I could see her saying that.

And I see that look on her face, sometimes, too. I say something, and she's, like, _floored!_

Nobody's ever been floored by what I've said. Not Pa, he just takes it all in stride, not anybody else, they just brush off whatever I say as they brush me out of their way of doing whatever important thing they have to do, or, they just find what I say ...

Well, they whisper to each other and point at me and laugh their tittering little vicious giggles.

I learned not to say anything to my classmates after a while. Classmates meaning girls, of course. You don't have a conversation with a boy unless it's about sports, and how could I have a conversation about something I knew nor cared nothing about. "Hey, Joe, you have an amazing swing, that ball cleared the outfield! You're _awesome!"_ And Joe says: "Duh, yeah, I know, right?"

I could keep that up for ... well, as long as the other girls seemed to, which was forever, and I just didn't get how they could put on these adoring, rapt eyes on their guys as the guys became uncomfortable and so reverted talking amongst themselves, so the girls just stood there, standing around their boys talking to themselves about their prowess in sports.

And I'm like ... _why?_ Did I miss something? I mean, like, _entirely? _Like: _the point of doing that?_

I mean, the total sum of my conversations with Rosalie has nothing to do with what an awesomely fast runner she is. No, our conversations are about ... well: _everything!_ Even things I'm very uncomfortable talking about, but I can talk to her about anything, and she can say, and she does say, 'that's bullshit!' but she _goddamn means it_ when she's says that, and isn't saying that to get me out of her hair. Or she says, 'well, think about it this way,' or she says, 'that's amazing!' and 'you are amazing!' and she can be sarcastic when she says that, and she can be serious when she says that, but _no one_ has _ever_ said that to me.

And I can probably say that about nearly every sentence she's uttered to me: nobody else has ever said that to me.

"Let's say," Rosalie's voice called me back to the present, "for argument's sake, that I don't know what you mean. So, pretend I don't have any insights into the inner workings of your mind, ..."

Here I snorted derisively. '_Oh, I can read your mind, but I don't get what you're saying.'_ _Yeah, right!_ I couldn't suppress my sarcastic thought.

Rosalie gave me a knowing grin.

"So, tell me, Lizzie," she continued unabated, "what precisely do you mean by saying you're not a girl."

"Oh," I said. When she said it that way, it did sound odd, like I wanted to be a boy or something. "I didn't mean it _that way,_ Rosalie, I meant ... well, you said, _'Good girl!'"_ I imitated her patronizing tone. "And ..."

"Well, ..."

This was hard.

It was hard telling Rosalie this, because it was something that she did, and did intentionally, to annoy me, ... and it _really did_ annoy me.

"Well," I tried again, quietly, trying to quiet myself and my rapidly-beating heart. "You were always calling me _'girl'_ before you ... well, before now, and that really _irked_ me, Rosalie."

I looked at her for understanding. She regarded me impassively.

I said the last bit with more force than I intended. I guess I really _was_ irked.

So I tried again, very, very quietly, putting my heart as softly as I could into what I said.

"I'm not a little girl, Rosalie." ... _and I don't like being treated like one._

Rosalie just stood there, then she frowned and then did something I hadn't seen her do before, she brought her hand up to her mouth and then wiped it across her face.

I was tired.

I was _exhausted._

But this was the first time that I noticed the very faint dark circles under her eyes that made her look perpetually tired were now just ever so slightly more pronounced.

She didn't look any different than she always did: confident, powerful, poised.

But maybe I was looking at her with different eyes: with the eyes of somebody who knew her now, as nobody else did, nor could.

She put her hand back to her side.

"Were you ever?" she asked.

My eyebrows creased. "Was I ever what?" I asked in confusion.

"Were you ever a little girl?"

This statement confused me more.

"Well, yeah, Rosalie," I said, "I mean, you know, I was ..."

She interrupted. "Your mother left you when you were how old, again?"

_Oh._ "Um," I paused. I knew the answer by heart, but I also saw now what she was saying. "I was ten."

"And you had to grow up pretty quickly then, didn't you?" she confirmed. "Or did your father handle everything regarding the management of the household? Or did he get help? Or what happened?"

"Oh. That. Yeah, ..." I drew that word out.

Yeah. It wasn't like Pa _made_ me do anything, but I just saw what needed to be done, and I did it. He didn't ask for no help, and I didn't want him to. I kinda felt it was my job to pick up the slack. And you may say, 'What? A girl ten years old?' because you're not from around here, are you? Or you're well-off. Well, let me tell you: kids much younger that me were working wherever they could, ten-, twelve-hour days and longer and being paid child-labor rates, just so the family had one more income to help them get by, and the girls who weren't working in the factories had to help at home. We weren't hurting for food nor heat, but Pa had a full-time job, and sometimes 'round-the-clock, and he came home tired sometimes and just fell into bed, barely able to ask if I ate something after school, so he would go to sleep hungry if I didn't cram something into his mouth.

A ten-year-old girl gets really good at cooking and cleaning and washing, and good at it really fast, too, when there's nobody else to do what needs to be done.

And really, it wasn't a hard life. Pa was like almost zero-maintenance. My grades at school didn't hurt because of the housework, ... that is, they didn't hurt _more,_ and I had all the time I wanted to read after I did the chores that I took on for myself.

But I wasn't a little girl in a frock and petticoat at ten, anymore. I didn't play with the other girls. I grew up fast, and either they had to, too, which most of them didn't, or they played with their friends after the lessons at school. I was too poor, too tired, too hard-working and too serious to be a good playmate to anybody.

Rosalie tilted her head to one side, and I saw her reading every single thought as I thought it.

It was amazing to watch her read me and know me like nobody else ever had.

It was amazing and scary, because, come on, really! I was more naked in front of Rosalie, wearing layers of clothes than I was in front of Dr. Paardenkooper with my trou down, open and exposed to him, sloughing and ashamed.

But with that, there was a clinical distance. I could protect myself by going away into myself as he examined me.

Rosalie was present and attentive to me, fully taking me in, and in so doing, I was taken by her. I was present to her, there was no hiding anything in me from her, my weakness, my sadness, my pettiness, my insignificance. She saw it all, all of me, and that was scary.

Because I could stand up to anybody: _'Excuse me! I'm not a little girl!'_ and they would summarily dismiss me. They didn't care about the little girl wearing britches too big for her.

I was invisible to them, so it was safe for me to stand up to them, because they didn't care.

It's really easy to be brave against a world that didn't care, because I just didn't exist in it to anybody in that world. Look at brave little me, standing up for myself to nobody who cared.

But Rosalie cared, and saw me, and saw that ...

When she said: 'You never were a little girl,' ...

I saw that she knew my secret.

And my secret was ... that I really _was_ a little girl... and that I was a little girl _still._ That I was just pretending to be fierce and stand up for myself and take care of everything, because I was just pretending to be grown up.

But the fact of the matter was, that only a little girl could only say 'I'm not a little girl, Rosalie,' and she could only say it in a little girl's voice.

Rosalie saw it all. She looked into my heart, she looked into my soul, and saw me being so fierce, or forcing myself to pretend to be calm and sincere, and standing up for myself, saying so proudly that I wasn't a little girl, because, look at me, I ran the house since I was ten-years-old. A little girl couldn't possibly do that.

She couldn't possibly, because if she tried, she'd always be scared that one day she'd fail, and be crushed under the pressure of trying to pretend to be grown up and trying to convince everyone that that's what she was, when she really wasn't.

If a little girl tried to do that, she'd be scarred by that, and those scars would run very, very deeply, for anybody to see, ...

That is, for anybody who bothered to look.

Rosalie was looking right at me.

No, she was looking right _into_ me.

Has anybody ever looked into your soul? And I mean _really_ looked into your soul and saw everything, and I mean _really everything?_ Be honest. Has anybody ever bothered to do that? To look right into you and know you?

I'll bet not. I don't have a good track record with betting now, but this one is a pretty safe bet, I'm betting (yup, I'm doubling down). And you know why? Because nobody has the time any more. Everybody's always so busy, all the time, just trying to scrape by, and when they're not, then they want that beer in their hand, and Pa never said this to me, but then they want you to leave them the hell alone because they're so goddamn tired, and all they want to do is just relax for one minute or a half-an-hour and read the sports page or whatever before they drag their tired selves to bed because they had to get up tomorrow morning to do the exact same exhausting thing all over again. No hope for tomorrow other than the hope that tomorrow would lead to the next tomorrow with a paying job, because people were dying on the streets or between towns looking for some kind of work, and the people who had jobs were absolutely terrified that they wouldn't have their job tomorrow, although they never, ever voiced this, not even to themselves, and those people, those blessed, lucky people, like Pa, who had a job today and a job tomorrow and had a home to come home to with dinner on the table prepared by his daughter who loved him with all her heart, filled and overflowing with pride for him, that he was the good man that he was ...

... oh, God, ... guess who's crying like a little girl she says she isn't? Rosalie must be having a field day with my thoughts now.

Isn't this just grand?

Rosalie walked right up to me, and cradled my cheeks in her hands. I felt my tears touch her hands, and then roll over them, disregarding that they were her elegant and perfectly smooth hands, and not my plain, common cheeks.

She looked at me with sympathy.

"Yeah," she said in understanding. "But moreso than that, you probably felt it even before your mother left, didn't you? Even though you didn't know what 'it' was. But it felt wrong, didn't it? 'It' being 'everything,' right? For a child's world is created by her parents; that's all she knows. And for how many years does a marriage fall apart before the principals separate? How many years did you live in a household filled with acrimony, perhaps? or severity? or a cold distance between your parents? Or a polite insincerity or indifference masking the pain that both parties felt as they heaped wrongs on each other and on themselves? And this was your entire world, wasn't it, Lizzie?"

I sobbed loudly.

This was her comfort?

"You grew up in that. A ten-year-old girl who couldn't be a girl, not under those conditions. And even before then. Do you ever remember being a little girl at all? Even once in your life?" she probed gently.

Do you know when a dentist gently probes a cavity in your mouth with his drill, your head strapped down to the back of his chair, immobile, and ... novocaine? What's that? And who can afford it? And all you can do is look up at him with your eyes pleading him not, please, not the drill, buzzing so angrily, so hungrily. And he looks on you kindly and says, 'it will be over soon.'

His kind, kind words and he brings the drill down into your mouth, and the agony blinds you to everything except the knowledge that this is going to go on and on and on, and you can't stop it.

The ground became unsteady beneath my feet, and I was trying so hard to keep the tears in, because if they came out, that is: if they came out _more,_ I just knew the wailing would start, and I didn't know when it would stop.

She was breaking me, but with kindness, so how could I stop her? _'Please stop helping me, Rosalie?'_

No way to win. No way out.

In the distance, the outline of the cabin formed the slightest of traces. An invisible outline against the backdrop of the forest. If I ran with all my might, I might be able to make it to the cabin before I totally lost it.

I was shaken, and I was literally shaking, vibrating, in her hands, my legs barely supported the weight of me trying to bear the brunt of her words.

"You are right, Lizzie: you're not a little girl. You never were. You never were allowed to be one. Do you know how I know all this?" she asked sadly.

"Please," I begged.

I knew how she knew this. Her eyes looked right into my soul and saw everything.

"Lizzie, no. Don't run from this. Hear me," she said.

I was vibrating in place. She said 'don't run,' because she knew I was retreating, even if my boots were rooted to the spot. My eyes darted everywhere, looking for an escape, but there was no escape from her.

Because there was no escape from me. I could run from her, and get maybe one second's respite. But I couldn't run from me. And that's how she had me enthralled. She _knew_ me.

I thought I knew her. I did. I do.

But knowing her I now saw was a drop in the ocean of what she knew. I saw her broken heart, but she saw broken me, and she saw into the depths of me that I didn't even know existed until now when she pointed them out to me.

"Lizzie?" she called to me.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see her, even though my eyes were wide open. I couldn't see anything any more. The only thing that kept me upright was my chin resting in the palms of her hands.

"Lizzie?"

Everything went black.

* * *

**A/N: **An analysis of this chapter is available at twilight-dad-dot-blogspot-dot-com /2013 /04 /msr-ch-69-fbs-friends-with-benefits-dot-html and /a-scar-dot-html


	70. Sisters: III — Little One

**Chapter Summary: **Fuck. FuckfuckfuckFUCKfuck! FUCK! I almost said it. I almost God-damn said it to her. God damn fainting right into my arms, exposing her neck like that, and then GIVING ME HER GOD-DAMN PLEADING EYES! Fuck. Please, God: take her. Before I do.

* * *

The world came to me very slowly, I was aware that I was lying down, and that I was breathing.

I suppose 'breathing' is a good thing, I guess.

Then the world came to me all at once. My head was on a pillow, my body on the bed, all bundled up under the covers, and I was unencumbered by clothes, for the most part. I verified that by rubbing my legs together, no boots, nor socks nor jeans, and I felt my arms against the sheets.

I was wearing a tee and panties, however, thanking God for the small miracle that my modesty was preserved, even if my dignity wasn't.

Fainting. Fainting just like a scared, little girl.

The tee shirt felt crisp, you know? Like how a new or freshly washed shirt does, and the panties didn't have that icky worn feel to them that walking a mile outside in the snow would give to them.

I guess, for the time I was being changed, my modesty _wasn't_ preserved. I grimaced, but could I begrudge Rosalie changing me? She probably thought if I can't walk in a straight line to the potty and back without fainting, then I probably couldn't manage the extremely difficult task of being able to undress and then redress myself.

Can't blame her. She was probably right.

And yes, I have sunk this low. Thanks.

I sighed and opened my eyes, turning my head to greet the world.

The world looked right back at me.

Rosalie was sitting on the floor right by the bed, apparently, for I opened my eyes to look right into hers.

Her perfect, heart-breakingly beautiful golden eyes.

Her chin was resting on her hands, and she regarded me with endless patience.

I wonder how long she had been sitting here like this?

I turned away and covered my eyes with my arm.

Maybe if I couldn't see her, she'd go away.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" I mumbled petulantly.

I didn't add the _'than.'_ That was obvious:

_... than sit there and watch a total screw-up like me?_

I didn't need to add that last bit.

It was obvious to everybody in the room.

"Hm," Rosalie's voice floated over to me an easy drawl, burning into my soul with the lazy way it hung in the air, so nonchalantly.

My arm tightened over my face, and I wished I could actually bury my head into my pillow.

"I suppose you're right, Lizzie," Rosalie said slowly, mocking a thoughtful air. "I could be working toward world peace right now..."

I turned away from her completely, grabbing my pillow, and coiled up into a ball around it.

"The world _is_ at peace, Rosalie," I retorted spitefully into my pillow.

Then I instantly regretted saying anything at all. She had baited me, and, like the fool I was, I just swallowed it right up, didn't I?

It's so great to know you have a button that someone can press to get you to react a certain way. I had blamed everybody else for being boring and predictable, but here I was being exactly that, and to the very person I didn't want to be, too.

That stung: being manipulated, and knowing you're a person who falls right into it.

"Well, then," Rosalie responded easily. "Cross that one off my list. 'Work toward World peace.' Done. So, no, Lizzie, I guess I don't have anything better to do."

I heard the smirk in her voice. My arms tightened around my pillow.

"What about poverty?" I asked querulously, "or hunger, huh? What about those? People are dying, and what're you doing about that? You're just ..."

_... and you're just sitting here watching plain, little me._

"Yes, 'people,'" Rosalie spat out, scornful and resigned at the same time. "so long as none of those 'people' are you, right, Lizzie? So you can indulge in a nice, long sulk?"

I felt a hand very lightly touch, then rest on my shoulder blade.

I shivered all over. My whole body shook. It wasn't like her hand was cold on my back. It was, but it ... I can't explain it ... it was a cold that let me know I wasn't alone, that somebody cared for me, and I would've just let myself get sucked into that, forever — 'forever,' one of Rosalie's favorite words — but I shivered because I knew I didn't deserve it, her sympathy.

I shook, but she didn't remove her hand.

I wondered, idly, how tightly I could squeeze the pillow before it burst.

"Yeah," I said sadly, admitting my shame.

Then I felt my back tense up around her hand, and I felt a bit of resolve. "All I wanna do right now is just lie here and ..." I sighed hard. "Just lie here, is all, I guess, and not have something wild or crazy happen, okay? Is that too much to ask?"

I mean, was it? I had been through a lot, and just today, or this morning, already. Didn't I deserve a nice, long sulk?

"So you'd rather ask for too little instead of too much?" Rosalie chided.

My eyes squeezed more tightly closed, and I snarled, quietly, into the pillow.

Apparently it was too much to ask, or too little, I guess, but either way, I didn't care. I wasn't up for her guilty jibes right now.

Rosalie chuckled lightly at my snarl ... not the reaction I wanted her to have, by the way.

"Okay," she said easily, "I'll leave you alone to your sulk, little girl."

She removed her hand from my back.

I hurt. I hurt double. Her hand there ... I needed it, I needed her love and support, and when she took it away, there was a hole left on my back that was almost physically painful.

But her taking her hand away also meant I couldn't shrug it off in anger. She anticipated me and preempted my angry shrug, taking away even that shred of dignity that I didn't have anymore.

I whipped around and glared at her furiously. "I _told_ you _not_ to call me that!" I shouted.

She looked at me impassively. "Because it's true?"

My jaw worked furiously, and I so wanted to scream something at her. But nothing came out, so all that was left is me, my fury, my tight jaw, and my glaring eyes.

And Rosalie took all of that, unmoved, just sitting there, like a stone statue, a kind and caring stone statue looking at a little girl being angry at the truth.

And I saw, in her eyes, how I looked.

I dropped my eyes, feeling stupid.

"Yeah," I whispered down to my chest, forced to agree with her, and hating myself for it: "'cause it's true."

And saying that, I was nearly overcome by shame. I had tried so hard to be worthy, to be grown up, or at least try to pretend to be that way, you know? capable and reliable, confident, independent, somebody who could take care of herself, you know? A ... okay, a girl who could carry her own weight.

But not somebody who faints and then has to be changed and put to bed.

Shame?

I think that if I could, I would die of it now.

Rosalie's lip rose in a sympathetic smile. "Do you remember outside when I offered you a choice between being an adult or being a little girl?"

I sighed a long, ragged sigh. "Yeah," I said sadly. "I guess I made the wrong choice."

Rosalie grimaced.

I guess she didn't like me saying that.

But her voice remained impassive. "Maybe, maybe not," she said coolly. "But did you miss the part that there was no shame in what you chose? I think you missed that part."

"You did say that, Rosalie," I said sadly. "I didn't miss it. But I said some things, too, and they still apply. I'm not a little girl, Rosalie. I can't be. I've done a lot of stuff. I've looked after Pa. I've ..."

I felt it somehow necessary to convince her of this.

She looked unconvinced.

I sighed. "I can't be a little girl, Rosalie. It'd be just ..."

I stopped.

"'Shameful'?" she supplied.

I shook my head. "I was thinking more along the lines of 'wrong.' I wouldn't be acting my age."

"Because ...?" she probed.

"Huh?" I asked.

I didn't get her. You're supposed to act your age. There's no because to that. You just are because you are is all.

"Hm," she paused thoughtfully. "What are the consequences if you don't 'act your age,' as you say?"

"Oh," I said, getting her.

I grabbed my pillow, hugging it again, looking into her eyes.

"Look," I said. "You told me what a burden I'd be to you, and, okay, I'm a burden already. I..." I said, then I swallowed.

"I don't want to be a burden to you, Rosalie. I don't wanna be a burden to anyone, and that's exactly what I'd be if you had to take care of me, because I can't take care of myself, and I have to be treated like a little girl. I wanna help, see? I wanna do stuff and take care of stuff, and ... I wanna, you know, contribute, and make it easier for you ..."

I looked imploringly at her.

"Do you see?"

Rosalie slowly rocked back into a more upright position, regarding me thoughtfully.

Finally, she said, "Yes, honey, I do see that. Thank you."

"So, ..." I began.

At the same time she said, "But do you help me by pretending to be what you're not?"

I was silenced, forgetting what I was going to say.

She continued. "If you're weak, pretending to be strong only makes it harder for me, because I have to deal with your pretense as well as your weakness. I am strong, sweetie, so you can be weak. It's okay to need help, to ask for it, or not even be able to ask for it, but just to get it when you need it. You _can_ be a little girl with me, and it's okay. I can manage."

"But you're not strong, Rosalie, you are weak." I said emphatically. "I told you that. You don't think you are, but you ..."

Rosalie held up her hand, then smiled faintly.

"I'm doing fine now, baby," she said kindly.

"And when you're not?" I asked her pointedly.

She smiled at me.

"What?" I said, not being able to take her silence.

"You seem to be doing better," she said.

I hugged my pillow and looked down, blushing a little.

It was always so hard for me to take praise.

"Yeah, I guess so," I admitted grudgingly. "I don't know what that has to do with what we were talking about, though."

Rosalie snickered. "Tough girl, hm?"

That earned her a glare from me, which only made her laugh quietly even more.

"What I'm saying, Lizzie," she explained, "is that you have a lapse. Being weak in a moment doesn't brand you as such, just be yourself, and when you're weak, be weak, and ask for help if you need it. When you're strong, be strong, and do what you will from your strength. But saying 'I'm not a girl,' when actually your whole being is crying out to me to 'please, please, see me all grown up, don't look at my hurt, don't look at my weakness, ...' Lizzie," she scolded gently.

I dropped my eyes again, not being able to face her critical stare.

I felt the touch of her knuckle on my cheek, then it went away.

"I never got to be a girl, either," she said softly.

I looked back at her.

"That's what I saw in you," she said. "You were trying so hard to be strong and mature and self-reliant..."

"The thing is," she continued. "You can be, and are, those things. But you can be a little girl, when you want to, and let go, and ..."

She smiled and shrugged. "... and play, and laugh, and ..."

She shrugged again. "... dance and sing and do whatever your heart desires. You can be a little girl, and let go, and just shuck off all the weight of responsibility that you've put on yourself all these years."

Her eyes shifted away. "I can't be a little girl, Lizzie. I simply cannot; I have responsibilities. But you can, and ..."

She shrugged.

I took in her words.

"Rosalie," I said seriously, "you say it's okay, but I have responsibilities, too; we're equals, you know," I reminded her, "and if I let go, or whatever, then _you_ have to ... well, I'm making it harder for you, because you have to be strong when I'm weak."

Rosalie nodded. "And you don't want to be a burden on me."

"Yeah," I said. "I don't want to be a burden on you."

"Or on anybody," she added.

I shrugged. "Well, yeah," I said.

Rosalie was quiet for a moment.

"Did you ever think that being a burden might actually be a gift?" she asked.

I tilted my head, trying to fathom what she meant.

How could being a burden on somebody be a gift? I mean, a being a burden meant being a burden, and you helped by helping somebody out, not by making things harder for them because they had to take care of you.

I didn't understand.

"No, Rosalie," I said in defeat. "I never thought that. And I don't get what you mean. If I'm a burden, then you have to pick up the slack."

"Yes," she said simply.

Sometimes with Rosalie, she just didn't explain things. Some people might find that frustrating. Or irritating.

Or both.

I shrugged, silently asking for elaboration.

"Hm," she hummed thoughtfully. "Put it this way: if you're weak, and need my help, and I give it to you, and that does help ... then wouldn't what I did be a gift? And your 'burden' be the thing that allowed me to offer it, and you to accept it?"

She smiled a small smile.

"If you never needed my help, nor anybody's, wouldn't you be perfectly self-sufficient? An island, totally free to isolate yourself from everybody else? And wouldn't you do just that if you burdened no one?"

She looked more pointedly at me on that last question.

"Um ..." I said, knowing that I would do exactly that, because that's exactly how I had lived my life up to now, and I felt embarrassed for working so hard to do that.

I had constructed around myself a perfect wall, where I didn't let anybody in, because I didn't have to.

In my defense, ...

Boy, am I defensive.

In my defense, when people did get near me, I always ended up hurt or embarrassed, so why bother?

"Put another way," she continued. "If you do stop trying to be strong when you're not, and you do let go, and be a little girl, and just have _fun, _Lizzie, ..."

Rosalie leaned in, and was almost pleading with me.

"If you just let go, and were yourself, and smiled if you wanted to or cried if you wanted to or ran, or played or whatever, ..."

"Rosalie," I interjected, "I'm crying _all the time,"_ I said forcefully, "and I _hate_ it."

"No, Lizzie, ..." she began.

_"Huh?"_ I burst out. She _had_ to be kidding; there's no way she didn't see that I was crying all the time.

She got that chiding look.

I glowered, but I stifled my retort.

"No, Lizzie," she said more softly. "What you do is you hold it in, and hold it in until you can't anymore and the tears burst forth in a torrent. If you just simply cried when you wanted to, you'd actually be productive with your tears, releasing the emotion, instead of destructive with them, bottling up your pain until you actually hurt yourself by repressing yourself."

"Lizzie," she said, "you don't cry because you're hurting. You cry because you try not to cry so hard you actually hurt yourself more. You cry twice as hard as you actually need to, and then you blame yourself for crying, wounding yourself triply."

A tear fell from my eye, and I gulped. "Okay," I said quietly. "ouch."

I had never cried up to now. I just did what I had to. So I had never had me crying put under the microscope, dissected, and then analyzed to show exactly how I was a little cry baby at _each step of the way?_

Like I said: _ouch._

Rosalie brought her hand up to my cheek. "It's okay, baby, you can cry."

"I...don't..." I was whispering each word, and each word hurt my throat as they forced their way out of my mouth. "...want... to."

"I know, baby," she said consolingly. "I know you don't want to, but it's okay with me."

It got harder to breathe and more tears fell, shaming me.

"You say it's okay, Rosalie," I said sorrowfully, "but it's not okay. It's not. I'm not like that, and you saying I can be won't just make me."

Rosalie smiled sadly at me. Fortunately, her hand was on my left cheek — the uppermost one — so my salty tears weren't touching her perfection.

"I know, sweetie," she repeated patiently. "I know you see it that way."

She shook her head, then continued. "And I'm also giving you that option to take, when you want to ... when you feel strong enough to, ... when you feel safe enough to. You can cry, if you want to, you can be a little girl, you can be strong. You can be you around me, when you want to."

Rosalie removed her hand, giving me space.

I barked out a little laugh. "And I can sulk like a little girl when I want to?" I asked disbelievingly.

"Yup," she said easily, a ghost of a smile on her lips.

I sniffled.

"Then how come I feel a thousand times better sulking like a little girl right now after all that, than when you were all mean-like saying, 'go ahead and sulk, little girl,' huh, Rosalie?" I demanded.

Rosalie shrugged dismissively.

"I don't do wallowing," she said coolly. "Before you were wallowing, blaming yourself, and there was nothing productive in that. But now, I think, ..."

"What do you think?" I dared, swallowing, my tears going away.

"What do _you_ think, Lizzie?" she asked right back.

I took a deep breathe. "I think I'm doing a little better, I guess..."

Rosalie smirked.

I grimaced. I guess I was breaking all the Rosalie-Hale-Rules-of-Grammar, or something, but I said I was doing _a little better, _I didn't say I was in tip-top form, because I wasn't, and she'd just have to deal with that, whether she liked that or not.

Besides, she said she could, anyway, so she may as well put her money where her mouth was, and starting right now, too.

So there.

"Baby," she said gravely. She brushed her finger against my cheek, then returned her hand to her lap. "It's okay to be you. You don't have to be something else. You don't have to be strong, or an adult, or pretend to have it all together, or anything that you're not. You can just be you, and that's fine."

She smirked. "Preferable, even, if you please."

I looked down. "Okay," I whispered humbly.

"So," Rosalie's tone became crisp and businesslike. "Anything I can get you while you're being you?"

"Huh?" I asked, surprised.

"Cup of water?" she added.

"Oh, um ..." I answered. I suddenly realized how very thirsty I was. "Yes, please." I said politely.

She was being very ... polite. It was odd, somehow, her, being solicitous to me. I watched her closely. I mean, before she took care of me, but it was like she was very businesslike about it, but now she was ...

Well, she still was businesslike, but now it seemed less formal, maybe, and more caring.

That was it, it was like she was truly concerned at how I was doing. It was like she cared for me.

I mean cared for me like an older sister cared for a younger sister, I guess. But I didn't know for sure, never having experienced that before, first hand. And the other sisters I saw, they were ... they were tight, like a unit. Like, they would turn on each other and fight and be vicious and spiteful with each other, but as soon as somebody else threatened one or the other, they were like ... scary how they defended each other and how they just savaged anyone who so much as looked funny at a sister, or said an untoward word. I never said anything mean to anybody, but when I saw other girls ... well, they didn't pick on a little sister ... that is: twice, and not without scratches and a shiner for it.

Rosalie was kind of like that to me. She was hard on me, all the time, but then she's like this now: solicitous, kind ... maybe even almost sweet.

Okay, maybe that's a stretch.

Rosalie rose from her seated position. I saw she had been sitting Indian-style, but, and here again I was so reminded I wasn't dealing with a person, instead of clambering up, using the bed as a support, she just simply rose. She pushed herself up from her ankles, it looked like, and then simply uncrossed her legs, sliding her leg in front to her side.

Have you seen gymnasts do that? Just rise up from a sitting position? If you have, then you know what I'm talking about, they make it look graceful, but you know it's taking everything to lift themselves up like that.

With Rosalie, she just ... rose. Gracefully, purposefully, almost carelessly, she rose to a standing position, and she didn't even look to see if I were looking, she just turned from that position, went to the sink, got a cup, and filled it from the big pot of water on the stove, and came back to me.

Nothing to see here, folks, just Rosalie Hale getting water for little me.

She handed me the cup with an apologetic "The fire's gone out," and sunk, gracefully, back down to the side of the bed into her prior sitting position.

I took the cup and took a small, careful sip.

The water wasn't even warm. It wasn't cold, but ...

"How long has the fire been out, Rosalie?" I asked carefully.

Rosalie shrugged.

Huh.

"How long have I been out?" I looked at her face closely as I asked.

"Not long," she answered. Not a trace of an expression on her face.

My eyes narrowed. I knew what that expressionless expression meant.

"That long, huh?" I demanded.

Rosalie rolled her eyes. "Lizzie, it doesn't matter..."

"It doesn't?" I shot back.

"No, it doesn't," she came right back, and then bossily: "Now drink up. You're dehydrated."

I glared at her, then harrumphed and tipped the cup back, drinking.

The water tasted really, really good. I guess she was right: I was thirsty.

She didn't have to be so bossy about it. So right all the time.

I looked out the window as I drank. It was still light outside, which meant it was before four p.m. ... unless ...

"Rosalie," I said, handing her the empty mug.

She rose again, heading toward the stove.

"... is it still today?" I asked plaintively.

Rosalie filled the mug with more water. She was being very careful, but I saw the tightness in her back, and I didn't know what that meant. Was she angry about something?

"Yes, sweetie," she said quietly, "it's still today."

She turned around, heading toward me, and I saw that she was smirking.

I also saw her eyes were pitch black.

I was starting to realize I couldn't tell if there were shades to her eyes. When her eyes were that black, obsidian, they made her look so dangerous.

But the thing is, ever since she took me out here, her eyes have been that color unless she was holding her breath.

I couldn't tell when she was dangerous, when she was about to snap, and when she wasn't, and she was ... 'okay.'

'Okay' for a ravenous vampire, that is.

I sighed.

"I meant," I said, "today, like today when we went outside so I could use the ..." I blushed, "... you know, ... go."

Rosalie chuckled very lightly, handed me the cup and sank back down beside me.

"Yes," she said easily. "Today is still today, baby."

I sipped the water carefully.

She didn't really answer my question, did she.

"You didn't answer my earlier question," I said, wondering if I should add an 'either' to that, or would that be pushing it?

"Which was ...?" she prompted gently.

_Oh, the one you steered the conversation away from, Rosalie, that one, _I thought, knowing full well that she knew full well what I was talking about.

Of course, I didn't say that out loud. If I did, she probably would've told me that didn't clear anything up, and she would be right, as she never seemed to answer any of my questions with a straightforward answer. She wouldn't say, _yes,_ or _no,_ or give the answer, like 1.77, like I wanted to know what the square root of pi was, and yes, I know that already, I'm not stupid, okay?

No, she's steer the conversation away from the question she didn't want to answer. Or she'd ask me right back, and demand that _I_ answer it to _her_ liking. Or she'd tell me a really long story that had a moral to it showing that asking the question was silly of me because wasn't it obvious by now after her telling me that long story that had nothing to do with anything that we were talking about, but no: Cinderella was soap, so that made her bad, so God exists, and next question or aren't you tired, _girl,_ and go to sleep.

See?

Don't worry if you said, 'um, what?' just now. That's my usual reaction, too. Consider yourself lucky you don't have Rosalie scolding you every time you say that (like: _all_ the time).

So I tried the direct approach. "I asked you ... you said I could be weak, but what if you're weak, too, then, Rosalie? You're not strong all the time. What if you're weak when I am, what happens then?"

"Hm."

That was all that Rosalie said for a while, and then she just got that faraway look.

I sipped my water, wondering if she was just going to get up and ignore that I even asked her, again.

Then: "That's not really the question, sweetie."

See?

I sighed.

I wondered if hell had to freeze over for her to give a straight answer, ... ever.

I tried not to roll my eyes. "Okay, Rosalie, what is the real question?"

Her lips twisted upward into a grimace. "It doesn't matter whether you are weak or if you strong, if I'm weak ... we'll have to figure out then what to do."

Then she shrugged.

"But you already know that, sweetie," she added softly.

My eyebrows creased.

"But ..." I said.

Rosalie nodded her head up once, encouragingly.

"But what happens if we don't figure out what to do?" I asked.

The smile was gone from her face, so only sadness remained in her impassive look from her black, black eyes.

"Then," she said simply, "you die."

"Uh, ..." I said.

Rosalie just looked at me.

I didn't really know what to say.

"You'd ..." I broke the silence finally, "kill me, even though ..."

I broke off.

"You'd kill your own sister, even?" I asked finally.

Rosalie smiled sadly, then very carefully touched my cheek.

"Baby, I am immortal, you are not. One slip ..." she shrugged, "and it doesn't matter who you are. You are mortal, and one mistake from me, and ..."

She dropped her eyes. "And you're dead. Just like that."

"But ..." I said.

She looked back at me.

"You're a Hale." I said. "You don't make mistakes."

"Yes," she said quietly.

Then she tilted her head to her side, regarding me closely.

"What?" I asked defensively.

She smiled, amused at something.

"You're a Hale, now, too, baby," she said, smiling.

I gasped.

"So, between the two of us, we'll figure something out."

She seemed pleased, but so, so serious, both at the same time.

"... or we won't."

"Oh," I said, not being able to process everything she was throwing at me.

I took another thoughtful sip.

"Does that mean I can't make any mistakes?" I asked quietly.

Rosalie gave me a small smile.

"No, baby," Rosalie said solemnly, "it means ..."

She stopped, then she got really interested in her hands in her lap.

"It means...?" I asked, hanging on her words, barely breathing.

This seemed crucial, somehow.

She looked back at me, and smiled.

"It means you are my little one," she said, "and I..."

The smile was empty. It was sad in a way that I knew she was crying.

Then it was gone.

She rose smoothly.

"Have to get the fire restarted," she said brusquely. "Have to get you fed."

And she was gone. Just like that. Just like her empty smile. The only trace of her was the blast of cold air from the door, now firmly closed again before I even saw it open.

* * *

**A/N: ** Chapter title inspired by Beck's eponymous song on his album _Sea Change._


	71. Fucked

**Chapter summary:** _'Lie, lie! Oh, God! Please, for the love of heaven, please LIE!' _Inside my head, my voice was telling me exactly what Rosalie was begging me to do, for my own sake. But could I do that? Could I listen to sense _and_ to what Rosalie was saying? No, of course not. Not me. Oh, God, I'm so fucked.

* * *

I was in _such_ big trouble.

I knew I was, but that didn't stop me. I had put on my clothes, and now I was pulling up my boots.

Besides, Rosalie didn't tell me I had to stay in bed, right? She didn't forbid me from going outside, right? So I wasn't, like, breaking any rules, was I? There was nothing she could hold against me, right? Besides, nobody died and made her head of the household. Who said she had to lay down the law? I could do whatever the hell I wanted to, and she could just watch if she didn't like it.

Hell, I could even start telling _her_ what to do all the time, bossing _her_ around. See how she likes that, huh?

I put on my coat and hat and opened up the door to the big, bad outside world.

I was in _seriously _bad trouble, wasn't I?

I sighed, and place my foot outside into the snow.

If Rosalie had come up behind me and whispered _'boo,'_ I probably would have screamed my head right off, I was that skittish.

But I looked around and nothing happened.

I stepped out of the cabin, more confident, closed the door, turned, and ...

... looked right into fury.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

There stood Rosalie, a part of a tree trunk, probably weighing more than me and her combined in her arms, it was bigger 'round than both of us put together. She was holding it in her arms as if it were me holding a potato or cucumber.

Why would I be holding a cucumber? you ask. Well, to make a salad, of course. Pa always skipped eating veggies if I didn't watch his diet like a hawk.

Just like Rosalie was glaring at me right now: like a hawk.

"Uh," I said, "I wanted to help?"

I wanted to sound more assertive than that, didn't I?

I think I wanted to tell her that, not ask her that.

I realized standing there, the cabin preventing me from backing away from her, and _her_ right in front of her, that all my courageous rhetoric was nothing more than talk, and empty talk at that.

Rosalie, standing in front of me, pure power, strength and anger, was not to be trifled with, nor was she to be gainsaid.

And on cue, she took that whole trunk section in one hand and smashed it into the ground next to her.

The impact shook snow off the branches of the trees around us, making a mini-blizzard, and I felt the vibrations of it travel through my boots, up through my body and rattle my teeth.

She glared at me. It looked like she could barely contain herself.

"You want to help?" she asked tightly.

"Yes, I ..." I began.

I was interrupted by _her. _Her Majesty.

Rosalie reached to the trunk in front of her, dug in with her fingers and ripped out a piece of it as wide as my waist. The stump was about four feet tall, or about half my height, so the piece she ripped out was a long strip that looked like, well, the bottom half of me if I stuck my legs together.

Then she ripped that strip in half, lengthwise.

_Oh, look! _I remarked to myself in my wise-cracky voice, _there're my two legs._

The whole time she didn't look at what she was doing, no, she locked eyes with me, and stared me down as she wrought the destruction to the wood right in front of her.

Or maybe arms.

I remembered earlier when I wrapped my arms around her after she told me not to, she said she could rip them right off.

She held my ripped-off arms, one in each of her hands.

I shuddered and then that particularly horrifying vision disappeared as she stacked the two pieces into the crook of her arm.

And then, I wondered if it weren't the wood right in front of her, but if I had taken a few more paces from the cabin and met her right there ...

I wonder what would've been happening ... to me?

She continued to glare at me balefully. "Get the door, Lizzie," she ordered curtly.

"Can I ..." I offered tentatively.

_"You can get your ASS inside NOW!"_ she screamed.

Dead silence.

I realized I was just standing there, in complete shock, my mouth hanging open.

She glided right up to me, malevolence personified.

"Door," she commanded.

I tried to move. I swear.

You ever get a deer in your crosshairs, and it sees you? And you know it knows it has to run, but it just stands there and dies when you pull the trigger?

Rosalie's jaw worked.

She pushed me. I swear to God she pushed me out of the way and opened the door herself.

"In," she snarled.

I started to shake my head in disbelief. _What the hell had gotten into her?_

But she was having none of it. And apparently I wasn't moving quickly enough for _Mistress Rosalie, _because she hooked me with her free arm, and scooted me into the cabin as she went in herself.

She kept scooting. She closed the door behind me and scooted me right to the bed.

Just the slightest pressure from her, and the back of my knees hit the bed, and I found myself sitting on the bed, watching her retreating back — her very _stiff_ retreating back — head toward the stove.

She unceremoniously dumped the strips of wood onto the floor by the stove and they landed with a thunderous crash, and the dishes shook in sympathy.

The wood she was carrying was probably heavier than me. I actually don't know if _each_ strip were heavier than me.

She turned toward me, glaring at me, pure anger radiating from her. Her silence pressed down on me, crushing me. She picked up a strip of wood, wider than my leg, never breaking her stare, then, upright again, she took the strip, one hand on each end, and ... _twisted._

The wood shrieked, then _splintered apart_ at the center. The torn ends looked like twenty-thousand daggers of wood, and I shuddered, imagining Rosalie throwing one of those pieces at me, and literally nailing my head into the wall behind me.

She kicked open the stove and threw the two pieces in.

Then she did it again with the other strip, _ripping_ the wood in half with that terrifying twist of hers.

And the way she was glaring at me, her look said it all: _you fuck with me, and your turn is next._

I just wish I knew how she thought I was ... well, you know ... okay: fucking with her, because I didn't have a clue as to why she was so angry with me.

She spit on the pieces of wood in her hand and then disdainfully threw those into the stove, too. She when to the supply box in the kitchen area and reached for the matches.

Did she turn around and look down into the box to get them? No. She kept staring right at me.

"Rosalie ..." I pleaded.

Her eyes narrowed to slits.

I sighed and shut up, looking away.

I heard the _whoosh!_ of the fire, and the inside of the cabin suddenly lit up with with a bright orange glow. I heard the _clank!_ of the stove door being forcefully slammed shut, and the cabin returned to the dim ambient light filtered in from the outside world.

I heard another loud _clank!_ and looked up to see Rosalie having put the big pot of chicken soup on the stovetop.

Lunch, I guess. If it were still lunchtime, that is.

She came right at me, again, and towered over me, just staring down at me, like she were waiting for me to say one word, so she could rip my face off.

I could only look up at that intensity for second before I looked down again.

Or, maybe I could say I didn't want to strain my neck and get a crick in it? Does that sound like a better reason for looking away? Should I have said that first? or instead?

Rosalie's firm hand took my chin and forced me to look at her again.

"Are you going to stay _right here?_ Or am I going to have to tie you down to this bed?"

The look on her face when she said that... and the fury in her tone as she said it ...

It was the kind of tone that said, _don't even think about messing with me!_

So, of course, I had to try to reach through to her, didn't I?

"Rosalie," I tried again, "can we _please_ just talk, _please?"_

_"Are you going to stay RIGHT HERE?"_ she was screaming right into my face now. _"Or do I have to FUCKING TIE YOU TO THE FUCKING BED RIGHT FUCKING NOW?"_

Her eyes. Oh, my God, her eyes!

There was no reason in them. There was nothing. She was just pure fury. Just that. Only that and nothing else.

She wasn't looking at me; no, she was looking right through me. She didn't see me at all. She was just blind to everything in her anger.

"I..." I gasped, "I'll stay right here, Rosalie, okay?" I said it as reasonably as I could. "I'll stay right here, okay?"

"Good!" she hissed, then gave my head a little push.

For her.

_"FUCK!" _she shrieked, then her hand whipped out and grabbed my head, and I hear a _crack! _as I felt her hand wrapped around the back of my head hit the wall behind me.

Hard.

She was leaning forward, practically having dived to grab my head before it hit the wall, and her face was practically right up against my face. Her eyes were so big, looking into my eyes. She was panting so hard, open-mouthed, and her breath washed over my face and neck like the wind from a bellows.

And I was breathing hard, too. And I was breathing in her essence, her anger, her fury, her pure, absolutely terrifying beauty, and I was hating myself for how much I wanted to breath in that rose-scented fury, how it made me want to ...

... to what?

... to ... to ... surrender myself to it, to her. How it made me want to ... no, how I wanted _her_ to just pull me into her, and take me, right here, right now, forcefully, like outside. _Exactly_ like outside, her so powerful, so angry, so dominating. I wanted her to pour out all her hate and fury over me and let it wash over me completely, filling me with all of her as I yielded my very self to that, so she could take me, and break me, right here, right now under her on this bed.

And I hated myself for being this nothing, weak thing that wanted to take all of her as she breathed on me, just like this, as she held me, surrounded me, just like this, as she ...

She let me go.

Just like that. Poof, and her arms were gone, and I crumpled into the bed.

I saw her retreating back, and heard her furious mutter: "She wants to _help!"_ as she headed toward the door.

I sat up, flustered, confused, angry.

"Rosalie, you're losing it! Go god-damn hunt now, for God's sake!" I shouted at her back.

That stopped her.

She whipped around. "And to what end?" she demanded.

_"HUH?"_ I gave it right back.

"What's the _fucking point_ of me hunting, Lizzie, huh?" she shouted. "When — what? are you going to _fucking help there, too?_ Am I going to be out, just like now, on the hunt, and — _Lo! and behold! _— I come across you wandering around outside because you want to _fucking help?_ Do you know what would happen then? _Do you, Lizzie?"_

I didn't even get a chance to reply.

Her tone was terrifying and ... terrified? ... in its absolute finality: "It would be a blood bath, ... _a fucking blood bath!"_

"But, no!" she continued. "We don't even have to play that little scenario, because here you are, right now, right after you fucking faint from exhaustion, dehydration and malnourishment and you want to _fucking help by going right back out into the fucking cold and _..."

She suddenly stopped, threw her hands down to her sides, and screamed.

She screamed, and she kept screaming. It was a head-thrown-back scream. It was a put your mittens over your ears kind of scream.

When that was over, and I felt my eardrums hadn't burst ... maybe, ... I looked up to see her panting and stiff, ramrod straight.

She glared at me. "You want to help?" she snarled. "You stay right _fucking_ there, and you _rest! Got it?"_

She turned, quickly, taking my silence as confirmation, and left, slamming the door behind her. Then I heard the stump outside making a sound very much like a scream as wood was torn away from wood. Over and over again.

Rosalie was attacking it with a vengeance.

I looked down at the bed and put my mittened hand over the covers, smoothing out a wrinkle.

I felt my jaw tighten.

I got up...

No.

I don't even remember getting up, because before I knew it, I was outside that door I don't remember opening, marching right at _her._

Rosalie stopped. The stump of a trunk lay in splinters everywhere.

She must've gone to town on it.

Quietly, menacingly she seemingly ripped each word right out of her chest and threw each one at me, one by one: "I thought I told you to stay inside."

She spat this out as if she were speaking to an addled child.

I glared at her, vibrating in place.

"Fuck you."

Everything stopped.

Rosalie crossed her arms, becoming very erect.

"What did you just say to me?" she demanded, very coolly, looking at me with a superior, contemptuous air, but covering over her obvious shock.

Suddenly my resolve, that I didn't know I had, being shocked, too, at what I just said, evaporated, and I looked away as I mumbled: "You heard what I said."

"No," she said, her voice very tightly controlled, "I _didn't_ hear you, Lizzie. You get me? Say it again. I dare you."

I looked at her. She had stood up from what she was doing, and she was giving me her whole attention. The way she was glaring at me, threatening, fierce, it was ... possessive. And the way she said _'I dare you,'_ it was like she was telling me no sane person would take her up on this.

No sane person would cross her and live, that is.

I felt my resolve come right back.

"I said, 'Fu...uuuuaaaaahhh...'"

I didn't get to say what I said, for, all of the sudden, she leapt at me, becoming a smudge of white and gold across the snow, right at me. I felt myself lifted up and placed very firmly against the cabin door, almost slammed into it, and that's when the air left my lungs in a whoosh. When the dust settled, I found myself looking down at Rosalie, lifted up and pinned against the door with her hand around my neck, but she was turned slightly away from me.

I saw why. Her right hand was raised, cocked back behind her head.

"Say it," she hissed menacingly, "and that mouth of yours will feel the full force of my hand, little sis."

Her menace went from taunting to deadly serious: "And I won't hold back."

I looked at her hand, hovering behind her head, cocked, ready to fire at the first word I said.

I looked back into her eyes.

She meant it.

If she hit me, and didn't hold back, she would rip my jaw off, and half my face, probably. She knew this. She knew I knew.

She looked right into my eyes.

"Was there anything you wanted to say to me?" she asked coolly.

And she waited.

I couldn't have said anything, even if I tried: her hand was pressed very firmly against my neck, nailing me to the door. It was a wonder my windpipe wasn't crushed.

I shook my head in a 'no.'

Her lips twisted up in a cruel grimace. "Thought not."

Then she let me go.

I fell a foot before my feet slammed into the ground. I felt the impact hit my knees as they hyperextended, then I felt the force of that vibrate right up my spine. I crumbled onto the ground.

"Ow!" I whispered, and curled up into a ball, holding my knees into my chest, trying to rub the agony out of them, as I sucked air back into my lungs.

Rosalie's boots appeared right in front of my face.

It was no fair that even her boots could be unearthly: beautiful and terrifying. They were just boots! But the fact that they belonged to her, that she was wearing them, almost imparted a mystical quality to them.

Rosalie reached down and pulled me up, part way, by the lapels of my coat, then she let go again, dropping me down into the snow in a seated position, my back against the wall. She put a steadying hand on my shoulder, and looked right into my eyes, her cobra-like eyes pinning me in place.

Did you get the part where my back was against the wall?

I just wanted to make sure you got that.

And with Rosalie squatting right in front of me like that?

I'm sure most the people in the world could safely say that they weren't in as much serious trouble as I was right this second.

But I could always console myself that I brought this right on myself, and I knew what I was doing, too. I just had to open my big mouth and ... find myself right here.

"So," Rosalie said very calmly to me, "I think we have some unfinished business here. I told you to stay inside. You didn't. Then you said something to me."

She leaned back on her haunches, regarding me ... what's the opposite 'coolly'?

She _did_ regard me coolly, but like she was looking at me to see the best way she could dissect me.

'Best way' not meaning 'the best way for me,' oh, no! Not even close. No, the 'best way' here meant the best way for her to make me feel the most agony and scream the longest and hardest before her tearing me apart limb from limb eventually killed me.

"Now," she continued, so tightly controlled, that is: so, so tightly controlled I didn't even see her making an effort to appear casual, "I didn't hear you rightly. Maybe I didn't hear you at all. Because, really, what I thought I heard..."

Here she lost it. She turned her head away slightly, and I saw her jaw clenching, and then ...

What's the scariest sound you've ever heard? Rosalie screaming?

Or Rosalie grinding her teeth in very tightly controlled fury?

I think I have a new scariest sound in the world, as I heard Rosalie's teeth grind as I saw her jaw working.

She took a second to collect herself, then she turned back, facing me, and the look in her eye ...

She didn't collect herself very well.

"So," she said, "you _couldn't _have said that to me, could you? There is no way you could've ever said _'fuck you'_ to me, and with that tone, too, so I must have heard you incorrectly. That's the only reasonable explanation I can come up with right now, because the other explanations ..."

I saw her losing it again, and forcefully recollect herself.

"So," she continued, "let me ask you, so I know how to proceed, ..."

Her eyes bore into me, and they were fierce, but then I saw they were pleading with me.

"Lizzie, did you just say 'fuck you' to me?"

Her voice, instead of being furious, was incredulous.

But what shocked me was that it was hurt.

"I..." I said, looking right into her burning-black eyes, her arm on my shoulder.

I looked away. I couldn't look at her.

I waited for her to interrupt me. I begged for it now. Every other time she did that, it _so_ pissed me off, but now, that I had nothing to say for myself, she just waited me out, and didn't do anything. She didn't shake me, she didn't scream at me.

She just did the worst thing possible in the world. She waited for me.

I couldn't take it. If she had me on a rack right now and was turning the wheel to pull me apart, it would've felt better than her waiting silence.

"I mean," I said quickly. "God almighty, Rosalie! How many times have you said _that word_ to me, okay? Just today? Just in the last, I don't know, _five minutes! _I don't see what the big deal is!"

I couldn't look at her as I blurted this out.

But it was reasonable. It made perfect sense. She had been mouthing off that word _all day,_ but I say it one time, and she has a conniption?

I risked a glance at her face.

... mistake.

That was a mistake.

Her face didn't say 'Well, yeah, you're right; that makes sense...'

No, her face said ...

Actually, I couldn't read what her face said, because her face was ... blank. Sad.

But looking into her eyes, I saw her heart.

And that was broken.

And I knew why.

Rosalie rocked back on her haunches, shifting her hand on my shoulder slightly, so I had to force myself into a more upright seated position so I wouldn't tilt over back into the snow.

This unfortunately made me face her.

But she wasn't facing me.

"Lizzie," she said sadly, "the big deal is, I've said 'fucking trees,' I've said 'fucking bed,' I've cursed this fucking empty place with this fucking hopeless situation. Heh," she laughed hollowly, "I've even begged God to fuck me and my fucking undeath — of course, like all my prayers, He didn't answer that — but I never expected you to slip so far as to ..."

She paused and looked at me sadly, "Have I ever said 'fuck you' to you?"

I looked into two wells of sadness before she looked away again.

"You 'fuck'-virgins," she whispered despondently in her scorn, "You hear somebody else use the word, so you think you know everything about it, and can't wait to use it to show how sophisticated you are, how worldly."

She couldn't look at me. She couldn't look at the person who said those words to her.

She shook her head.

"You wanted to hit one out of the park, didn't you, Lizzie. I could see it in you, so ... righteous, so ..."

She broke off.

"Well," she continued sadly, "You hit a homer, all right."

She put her hand over her heart. "You hit home." And her hand tightened to a fist, right over her heart.

They whole time she wouldn't look at me.

"Rosalie, ..." I said sadly.

"I'd ask why you said that," she said, not even hearing me. "Why you did that. But I don't need to ask. I know why. You wanted to hurt me. And you did."

"No, Rosalie," I pleaded. "I wanted to help you."

"I wanted to help." I begged her.

She still wouldn't look at me. "By saying 'fuck you'?" Her voice was incredulous, then it became sardonic. "That helped. Thanks." Then she asked sarcastically: "Do you even know what that means?"

I felt my chest grow tight. "I'm not stupid, Rosalie."

Rosalie was quiet for a moment, then she said sadly. "Funny. When people say that to me, every single time I see them angry at themselves for being as stupid as they are afraid they are."

She let that zinger sink in.

"So, tell me, what does it mean?" she asked quietly.

"You know," I said. And then I realized that she _did_ know. She used that word all the time, not me.

... until now.

"... like with Edward." I finished weakly.

"And with Royce," she added sadly. "Did you think I enjoyed that? Getting fucked by Royce? or by Edward? Just sat on like a piece of furniture and then used as a cum-dump? Is that what you wanted for me?"

"No, Rosalie!" I exclaimed, shocked that she could think I'd ever wish that on her. "I didn't mean that at all! I meant ..."

"You meant that," she said firmly. "That's what you meant when you said it, and you knew it. You wanted me to hurt, and, Lizzie, ..."

She looked right at me. "You hurt me."

Then she looked away.

"Ro..." I began.

"Let's pretend," she turned to face me again, her voice quickening with hope. "Let's pretend this whole thing just didn't happen, hm, Lizzie? Let's pretend I didn't hear you. I'll ask you, 'Lizzie ... did you just ... did you just say "fuck you" to me?' And you'll say, 'Why, no, Rosalie, you must've heard wrongly!' And I'll be like, 'Aww!' and you'll be like, 'Aww!' as if it never happened, ..."

Then she added fervently: "...because it didn't."

I looked at her in confusion and disbelief. Was she just asking me to ...

"Rosalie," I said slowly and carefully. "Are you asking me to lie?"

"Lie?" she asked in surprise, her eyes widening. "No, Lizzie, it's not a lie. We're just pretending, that's all. I just say something, and you just answer that. That's all. It's not a lie. And ..."

She became thoughtful. "You can forget, right? You are in time. You can't keep track of every moment. If you don't remember this from before, then ... it simply didn't happen at all. If I didn't hear you, and you don't remember, then it didn't happen. It never did."

Her words ... they were quick and certain, but listening to them, I only became _more_ confused.

"But you did hear me say it, Rosalie," I said, just to be sure what was real and what was pretend, because, like she said, I was losing track of both.

Her face hardened. "No, I didn't. I didn't hear you, because you didn't say it."

There.

Right there.

Everything became clear. Because I was looking right at her, and she was looking right at me, and she was speaking with confidence and authority.

And I knew, right here, that she was lying, right to my face.

I kinda knew why, too. She wanted this ... okay, this _ugliness, _to go away, so we could go back to the way we were, happy sisters just happily ... well, me fainting and her shredding wood or whatever she saw this ideal of us being sisters, happy with each other, content.

And I could not believe it. Wasn't it against everything she told me up to now? She told me that she lied, and all the time, too, but I hadn't seen it, I didn't feel it, until right now.

Did she want me to start lying? Wasn't that what she was asking of me? For me to lie so things could go on as before?

"Okay, Lizzie," Rosalie said, relief in her face, "I'll ask you now."

She squared her shoulders and flicked back her hair. "Lizzie, I thought I just heard you say something. Did you just say 'fuck you' to me now?"

She looked at me expectantly.

My throat was working and my lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.

And I didn't even hear her question, because inside my head, my voice, my voice that would've saved me several times if I had listened to it, was screaming: _Lie, lie, lie! Oh, please, God! Just lie! Just this one time. Lie, lie, Lie, LIE!_

"I..." breathed out.

"Lizzie," Rosalie snapped, interjecting quickly. "Say 'no.'"

I sniffled.

Her head twisted a little to the side, cobra-like, and she glared at me through the slits of her eyelids. "Just say 'no,' Lizzie," she commanded threateningly.

_'NO!' _My voice screamed to me. _Say 'no!' Say 'no' right now! Say 'NO!' SAY 'NOOOOO!'_

"Rosalie, I..." I choked out.

_"Say it!" _Rosalie screamed right in my face.

_SAY IT! _My voice screamed right at me. _Just fucking say it, you CUNT!_

"Rosalie, no, ..." I breathed out.

Rosalie breathed out a huge sigh of relief.

"No, Rosalie, I won't say it," I said sadly.

Rosalie's sigh of relief stopped mid-breath, and her pale white face became whiter.

"I can't say 'no.'" I couldn't stop. "I can't lie to you. I can't. I just can't. I said it. I said it and ... _oh, God, ..._ you were right: I meant it. Oh, my God,..."

Too late. I was crying freely now, and I couldn't stop.

"I said ..." I continued helplessly.

"Lizzie," she said quietly, and her grip on my shoulder tightened painfully. I heard the bones grinding against each other painfully as they were forced to follow the grip of her hand.

She gave one little light shove, and my back slammed against the door of the cabin behind me.

"If you say this," she threatened, "then it becomes real. And I told you that there would be consequences if you ..."

Her lips tightened into a thin, almost invisible, line.

"I won't go back on my word, Lizzie," Rosalie said with finality.

I was gasping in gulps of air, trying not to sob, trying to follow the situation as it spun out of control.

"But you said," I said helplessly. "You said you wouldn't ... do that if I ... because I was an adult now."

"Lizzie," Rosalie said sadly. "Were you acting like an adult when you told me to go fuck myself? Or were you acting like a spoiled, vicious, little child?"

She glared at me.

"One more time, Lizzie," she said. "One last chance."

I was shaking my head, helplessly carried away by my emotion and carried away by what I knew was right, what I had to do, no matter how impossibly hard it was.

Her right hand lashed out and grabbed my chin, stilling my head.

"Lizzie, honey," she pleaded her absolute demand, "did you say 'fuck you' to me just now? Lizzie," she added dangerously, "say 'no.' Say 'no,' right now."

My eyes were getting wider and wider, staring into her serious and unforgiving pools of blackness, and my breath was coming in gasps.

She let go of my chin. "Say 'no,' Lizzie," she gently directed.

And then, hopelessly, helplessly, an odd thought struck me.

Was this the 'lie' Rosalie was trying to show me? The lie of trying to live a pretense, knowing for the rest of your life that it was all built on one simple lie that everybody demanded, shouted, threatened you to say, and you said it then, because you 'had' to, but then you lived the rest of your quiet, pleasant, peaceful life living a lie, and even forgetting it, as Rosalie said I would, because it happened so long ago and everybody wanted you to do it, anyway, so it was all for the greater good?

Was this what she was showing me? That I should just give in, because everybody else does, living their simply life and it's all just a lie that they chose and forgot?

But then...

But then, it doesn't matter. Rosalie wasn't teaching me an object lesson here. She wasn't trying to ensnare me.

Or she was, and I was too stupid and too buffeted by everything to see it.

But it didn't matter. What mattered was that I could lie, right now, and justify it away.

And know it, for the rest of my life.

If I were honest with myself.

Or I could buck up, and no matter what Rosalie told me to do, no matter what she threatened me with ... I had to choose. And I had to live with it.

And she did, too.

Oh, my God! She did, too! If I lied now, she'd know it. And she'd pretend and be all happy, or pretend to be, ... but she'd know, every time she looked at me, she was looking at a liar. And every time she smiled at me and our happy, peaceful life, she'd have to force away that knowledge that it was all just a veneer of pretense, all built on a lie.

I shook my head, and bit my lip.

"No, Rosalie. I said it. I'm ... I'm sorry. I said it. I'm sorry."

I swallowed. Looking at her for understanding, or forgiveness.

Rosalie's left hand on my shoulder fell to her side.

And, the support gone, I crumpled back onto the ground.

She rose, standing erect, towering above me.

"Lizzie," she said quietly, looking down at me, her face a complete mask. "then you know what's going to happen. Come inside, please, when you're ready. I'll be waiting."

She stepped over me like I was horse manure and opened the door, stepping inside the cabin.

She turned and looked down on me — a pile of horse shit — "If I were you, I wouldn't make me wait so long that I have to come back out and drag you inside. That would make your situation worse... much, _much_ worse."

She gave me one long unreadable look, then she closed the door quietly.

I looked over the shattered and splintered remains of what used to be part of a tree trunk, and wondered if it were lucky, compared to me.

My inner voice had abandoned me during my soul-searching, probably seeing where I was going with my train of thought, and probably getting the hell out of this no-win situation while the getting was good.

But I didn't need my voice to tell me anything now.

I knew I was seriously fucked.


	72. Breathing

**Chapter summary: **What's the one thing that tells you you're alive? Breathing, right? So, the trick is to keep breathing. If I kept breathing, I could make it through this. But then I saw _her_, sitting there, waiting. And I knew I was dead, because breathing ...? What's that?

* * *

Breathing.

I concentrated on my breathing, because that was something I could control. I didn't want to listen to the _thud-thud-thud_ of my heartbeat because that was something wildly out of control.

If I could focus on something I could do, maybe I'd get through this.

'This.'

I was gonna open up that door, walk inside, and ...

I could just draw a picture of it. Rosalie was going to ...

Rosalie was going to spank me like I was a little child. And worse, she was going to make me _feel_ like a little child, and I could guess how, too. She'd belittle me, embarrass me, and, since I wasn't a little child — physically, anyway, and please don't make comments about mentally, I'm doing fine enough by myself in that department without your help — oh, and don't comment that I look like a child physically, too, I need to go in there _not crying_ at the get go, okay? — she would hit me really, really hard, so that the pain would be so intense that I would howl like one. Probably even if I tried not to.

And I knew what I could do.

I could fight this. I could protest.

And I knew what that would do.

That would get me into more trouble, because that would just make her angry.

Angr_ier._

And we didn't need this. We needed her controlled so she didn't kill me, because she was this close to killing me, I could tell.

You tell Rosalie Hale 'fuck you,' and having her not kill you would be a miracle.

Now why somebody would tell her 'fuck you' in the first place ...

No. Don't dwell on things I did. I can't control that anymore. I can control my breathing. Focus on that.

And, when I went through that door, I knew one thing I would have to control if I was going to make it through this alive, maybe.

My tongue.

But the problem is, this tongue of mine just told Rosalie to go fuck herself. This tongue of mine is what got me into trouble in the first place.

I wonder ... was Rosalie going to rip it out, first thing, so she wouldn't have to put up with me and my stupid whining?

One way to find out.

And that was, to get up, to pick myself up off the ground, and go in there, back straight, and take what's coming to me.

Or, I could — what did Rosalie call it? — wallow for a bit more, and have her come out here and get me, and drag me back inside, pulling my arm out of my socket, or by my hair as I screamed as she pulled me across the floor. That would be just _super._

I got up. That took a lot more effort than I thought it would. I did just so want to lie on the ground until Rosalie came and fetched me in. At least that way none of this would be because of me making it happen, right? She could force me at every step of the way, and she could do that, but I could say that I never played by her game.

I could do that, and keep my pride intact. She could do whatever she wanted to me, but I could say I never gave into her.

Just like a stubborn little child.

I sighed.

So, this is what I reduced to: I had to act like an adult and accept what I did, what I said, and cooperate with _her, _with the authorities, as it were, instead of being a little rebellious baby.

I had to be an adult, so I could accept my being punishment, spanked like a child, with any dignity.

Or I could whine and fight and cry and be dragged in there, just like a spoilt cry-baby, so I could be punished like a child.

Either way, everything goes exactly the way Rosalie says it will. She calls the shots, and the shots ... what? ... just do whatever she says?

Why does she get to just do whatever she wants and tell everybody else whatever she wants, and she gets it all? Why doesn't that work for me? Why hasn't anything ever gone my way, and instead of me telling everybody else what to do, _everybody, EVERYBODY _is always bossing _me_ around, and all I can to is just follow along and put a smile on my face, and they don't even care, and the _one time _— _the one time in my life! _—I fight back, I'm the bad guy, and I get punished for it?

_Why?_

I had lost track of my breathing. I'm supposed to watch that, just that, and get through this.

And I can't even do that.

It's hard to watch your breathing, to control just that, when I can't even control anything in my life, because when I try, I screw everything up. I just try to help, and I just run right out there, and I say right to her face ...

_Oh, God._

I'm not breathing anymore, I'm crying. And Rosalie hasn't even started in on me.

I looked out at the forest, rubbing my face with the back of my coat sleeve.

_Or I could ..._

A thought occurred to me.

I could just pick a direction and start running. Right into the forest. It was thick with trees. And how long would she wait for me to come in before she lost patience? A few minutes? A few minutes would give me a pretty good lead, wouldn't it? And if she didn't know which direction I went in ...

She might not find me.

I gasped.

She might go off in the wrong direction, hunting me down, blinded by fury, and I would just run and run and run, putting everything in me to get away. She'd be angry, and make stupid mistakes, right? and run off in the direction of the potty, because we always went that way, so maybe she'd think I needed to pee again and got lost and look around there for a while, a _long_ while, and in the meantime, I'd keep putting distance between us, and she wouldn't have a _clue_ which direction I went, North, South, East or West, and when she finally realized I hadn't gone to the potty, she'd _really _be angry, and head of in a random direction, looking for me, and it'd be the _wrong_ direction, and soon day'd turn to night, and there'd be miles and miles between us, and she wouldn't be able to find me!

She wouldn't be able to find me at all!

And I'd be free. Free of her. Free of what I said. Like she said, nobody'd know if I didn't say anything about it. I wouldn't lie. I wouldn't have to. I just wouldn't say anything, and nobody'd know.

Except me.

And Rosalie, hunting for me, for ... how long? days and days?

... for years?

Looking for me? Scared to death that I fell down somewhere and was unconscious and then overcome by the elements?

And would she stop looking for me? Ever? Until she found my body in the snow?

Because...

Because, let's get real here. I could pick a direction. But what direction would I pick? I'd be picking a direction away from her, not toward safety, and that was a big no-no. You ran _to_ safety, not _from_ danger, because when you were running _from _something, you were always looking _behind_ you, and not focusing on the next step in _front_ of you, which almost always in these situations had more danger than what you were leaving: a cliff, a loose stone to break an ankle, a river to fall into when wolves were leaping at your throat.

Those kinds of things.

And there was that little fact that she was a hunter, and ... I was the hunted.

How good a hunter was she? I'd be willing to bet she was _pretty damn good_ at it. A solid year hunting down all those animals that I saw in my dream — tracking, attacking, ... _killing _— and how good a ... well, 'hunted' was I?

Well, I was pretty good at being found by her, every single time. She just seemed to know exactly where I was, all the time, even when she went off to find this cabin and I wandered off in a random direction, she found me without even trying, and saved my life ... twice in a row: once from a _pack of wolves ..._

I thought about that. Rosalie took on a wolf pack and won. No, she didn't even break a sweat.

And then again, from freezing to death and drowning in a river. She just dived right in, and I guess pulled me out and dragged my frozen body to the cabin and started a fire and everything, while all I did during that whole time was not die.

I just saw me, running through the forest, but then, because I was — what did Rosalie say? — tired, weak, hungry, thirsty? Something like that, but the way she said it.

Anyway.

I saw me that, running, then getting tired, then slipping and falling, tripping over a root, then getting stabbed by a branch or hitting a rock, and trying to get up, and getting turns around, and then just wandering around for a while, bleeding out, then just sitting down, waiting for Rosalie to come by, eventually, and collect me, bringing me back to the cabin ...

... if she bothered, that is.

I felt my little heart skip a beat.

I mean, why would she bother? I had been assuming she _would _hunt me down, and she _would_ find me, and she _would_ bring me back, making sure I was alive and well, and nursing me back to health if I weren't.

But that was an assumption.

What if I were assuming wrong now?

I gulped, considering that.

I mean, I just told her ... I closed my eyes, remembering painfully what I told her.

What if I left, she looked outside, didn't see me, and ...

And said to herself: 'Huh. She's gone? Good riddance. "Fuck you" she says? Well, fuck her, that little cunt.'

And she'd just ... close the door behind her, and ... leave. Forever.

And I'd be out there, in the forest, sitting down, waiting for her to rescue me, and not knowing she wasn't coming, because she couldn't give a ...

Because she didn't give a fuck about me.

She said she didn't say that to me ... but that was to a person who didn't say 'fuck you' to her.

I wonder how many people ever said that to her.

Judging by the look on her face when I said that, I would have to say about zero. Maybe.

That is, until I said it.

If I were her, and I said that to her, would I bother to lift a finger to look for that little gi—...

That little ...

I started panting, hating myself more and more,

That_ fucking little CUNT WHO SAID THAT TO HER?_

Would I? _Would I? WOULD I? HUH?_

Or would I just ... know she'd run off, and know exactly how long she'd last before the exposure to the elements overcame her, she being cold, tired and hungry already, or not even that, because all that needed to happen was that she'd make one little mistake, tripping, and falling, and not getting up again, because she couldn't, her leg broken.

And knowing that, just saying to myself...

_Fuck her._

And leaving, never to return.

Yeah. Running off. Not knowing which direction to go. And waiting for Rosalie to rescue me, after I said that to her.

Good plan.

Great plan.

I wiped my face again with the back of my coat sleeve, that seemed somehow to be wet already.

Huh. I wonder how that happened.

God.

Pull yourself together. God damn it, pull yourself together, you're taking way, way too long now, and Rosalie must be getting really pissed off. So you either run, or get dragged in, or you face the music.

Your choice. Make it, and live with it.

I sighed, turned around, reached for the door, opened it, and stepped inside.

The first thing I saw — the _only_ thing I saw — was Rosalie, seated impassively, imperially, in the center of the small cabin, her legs crossed, her right foot casually resting against her left knee, her right hand on her chin, her fingers lightly resting against her cheek, the perfect image of absolute power and stillness, ...

And my breath left me.

* * *

**A/N: **So, remember when you got into really big trouble? Ever beat yourself up beforehand? Remember how that felt, beating yourself up _and then_ getting what-for? So, now that our heroine has thoroughly chastised herself, she should be good, right? All done, no worries, and the next chapter we'll just return to our regularly scheduled programming. Right? Right.

Sure. Yeah ... so, who's going to tell Rosalie that?


	73. totus tuus

**Chapter Summary: **I am hers. She can do with me whatever she wants. And she is my Rose. _Warning: _graphic and gratuitous depiction of physical punishment. NSFW.

* * *

"That took a while."

Rosalie didn't shift a muscle, and her face was expressionless. She just sat there, leaning against the hardback of the chair.

It was an observation from her of the passing time. Only that, and nothing more.

Except for the undercurrent of her annoyance and mounting displeasure with me.

"Yes, it did," I said quietly in acknowledgment.

I wondered if I should apologize, or if that would tick her off more?

I bit my lip. "I'm here, though," I said, hoping she understood what kind of effort that it took me to do just that, just to show up.

Rosalie was still, just examining me dispassionately. She raised her eyebrows, just ever so slightly in acknowledgment, not even giving me a 'Yeah, so?'

That's all I got.

That's something I noticed about her. She was always catching me doing bad things. And, okay, so I screwed up. I _really_ screwed up this time, and, well, every other time, too. But it was like, I don't know, maybe she wasn't _waiting _for me to screw up, but it seemed like she was always there to catch me when I was messing up.

I screw up big time, all the time, in her eyes. That's how she seems to see me: a screw-up.

And ...

But she _never_ acknowledges when I do something good, even if it's a little thing to her, but it takes everything I have just to try, and she's like ... she doesn't even know nor care. She's always on me about the way I speak, but when I tried really hard to use a big word, like 'spontaneity,' she didn't even say anything at all about it, and she even said I was stupid to think that thinking doesn't let you be spontaneous!

Or I offer her a flower, and it takes all the guts I have to do it, and, worse, _she_ has to give it to me, so I can even _think_ about giving it to her, and she's like, _Pffht! You can take your flower back; I don't want it._

I mean, like: okay? Ouch!

And then, okay, so, yes, I'm tired, but I wanted to help, and she goes _ballistic_ on me! She could've just explained this to me, but no, she goes nuts, and then she won't even give me a chance. She's all, like, furious _because I want to help?_ And so now I'm in trouble for that?

I do something wrong, I get in trouble. Okay, but I try to do something nice or I make an effort, and I get in trouble for that, too?

Where's the justice?

Rosalie flicked her fingers at me in a shooing motion.

Remember, Bel-... I mean Lizzie, watch the tongue. Watch the attitude.

I stood there. I didn't know what she meant, but I didn't trust my voice to sound neutral, and, right now, I'd rather be considered stupid than belligerent.

Rosalie waited, but I just kept quiet.

Finally, she said, "Take off your coat, Lizzie, and stay a while."

Then she added, "You are going to be staying a while. A long while."

I had started to take off my coat at her command, but when she added that afterthought, I stopped mid-button, looking at her.

She didn't look angry, which I took as a good sign, but she didn't look anything, and that worried me, because when I couldn't read her, that meant she could go any way, and there was no way for me to tell which way her mood would twist: she could be furious in an instant, or she could be kind and forgiving, or she could be both, one after the other so fast my head would be spinning, trying to keep up.

I restarted unbuttoning again, and asked her, carefully: "Uh ... how long is ... uh ... this gonna take?"

Rosalie was quiet again, just staring at me, watching my every move.

I was locked into her sights.

"Did you ever receive corporal punishment from either of your parents?" Rosalie asked.

There was nothing in her expression or her tone that I could reach out to.

I shook my head.

I never caused any trouble at home, so Pa never needed to. And Ma ...

All I remember from her was her look whenever she looked at me. She didn't punish me, ever, she just wished I wasn't there.

"I did," Rosalie said.

"I don't remember the infraction," she said, her voice emotionless. "I don't remember ever being intentionally disobedient, but something must have happened, because one day ..."

She pursed her lips in thought.

"Well, my mother didn't brook irregularity, and one day, I found myself over her knee, and ..."

She looks away as she said tonelessly, "...she beat the shit out of me."

"And then," she said after a pause, "she told me a Hale doesn't cry — _'Why are you crying?' _she demanded — so she beat me until there were no tears left in me to cry."

"I never cried after that, ever again," she said.

She looked back at me. "Well, after that, we had an image to uphold, so by dinner I had to act as nothing happened so Father wouldn't be perturbed. It must have been hard to sit for me, I suppose."

She shrugged. She didn't say anything after that.

I looked at her, cold, dispassionate, detached.

"How old were you?" I asked.

"Ten, I suppose," Rosalie said.

The same age Ma punished me, by leaving.

"Oh," I said.

"That's how long I'm going to beat you, Lizzie," Rosalie said.

I felt my heart beating, my breaths coming in shallow sips.

I licked my lips and asked tremulously, "'Til ... 'til I can't cry any more?"

"No, Lizzie," Rosalie said coolly, "Mother beat the shit out of me. Well, I'm going to find what in you says the word 'fuck,' then ..."

Her hand on her chin came down to rest on her lap. "I'll beat the fuck out of you."

"Oh," I said.

Suddenly, I wasn't so sure I'd be able to make it through this.

"Um, Rosalie ...?" I put forward tentatively. "I've been ... well, okay, I thought a bit outside, and maybe ... you know, we could ... resolve this like adults, you know? I am sorry, and I shouldn't have said it, and I know ..."

I paused and whispered, "I know I hurt you, and I'm sorry about that, Rosalie, and I won't do it again."

Rosalie regarded me coolly from her seated position, and I felt vulnerable and exposed standing there, my coat half off my shoulders. She brought her hands up to her face and steepled them in front of her.

"That seems a very reasonable suggestion," Rosalie said in a considered voice.

I watched her the whole time she said this. What she said was a compliment, right?

But I couldn't tell, by looking at her, what she was thinking — what she was _really_ thinking, that is. Her whole demeanor was relaxed, but there was nothing at all coming from her body language.

"Very mature," she added neutrally.

Still nothing from her. At all.

"Thank you," I said carefully.

"So," she confirmed slowly, "you thought of all this just now, did you?"

She did the hand flick-thing again. So I finished taking off my coat, looking at her the whole time, as I responded humbly, "Yes."

I dropped my coat by 'our' clothes piles. I don't think she had the patience for me folding it neatly.

"So," she continued coolly, "this all came to you after saying 'fuck you' to me, and not before?"

"Uh, ..." I contributed wittily.

"Right," Rosalie noted grimly.

She examined her nails critically.

I didn't know what to do. I was nervous, but also frozen to the spot.

"Do you need an engraved invitation?" Rosalie remarked, sounding bored, but I could see her mounting irritation.

"Oh," I whispered, and started going to her.

She looked up at me and _tsked._

I stopped.

"Pants," she ordered, and flicked with her hand.

The blood drained from my face.

I guess there were rules to this. I felt really embarrassed for not knowing them, and I felt scared that she was making me strip right in front of her. I looked around in a panic for something to hide behind while I took off my pants, but that's when I saw that she had folded the triptych back into itself and leaned it against the wall.

There was nothing between her and me.

I bit my lip hard and undid my belt, and then started to unbutton my fly. I was looking down, hard, only at my clumsy hands trying not to shake as they undid the buttons, and the heat on my face was almost actually burning hot.

But that was nothing to what embarrassed me when I slid down my pants.

You see, there are the blond-nordic Germans, those blond-blue-eyed teutons that have only hair on the tops of their heads and eyebrows and need to look at the razor once every two weeks for that one hair, maybe in one armpit. And then there're the brown Germans, or ... gorillas. You know: the girls with mustaches and beards who shave every few days, and it all comes right back — thick, rich, 'luxurious' are possible words to describe the hair here, there and everywhere — and, well ... I hadn't shaved since _before_ Rosalie picked me up on this field trip to nowhere. So that was ... a week? _two weeks?_

So guess which type of girl I was?

My pants went down around not Rosalie-pristine leg-skin, but a nice long spindly pair of lawns, or shaggy rug carpets, or ...

_Oh, God!_ I looked _ugly!_

But, luckily for me, I had my huge knobby knees to distract attention away from my skinny, hairy legs, right?

Rosalie could have skipped the spanking and just had me stand there while she stared at my legs, and I couldn't've imagined a worse punishment than that.

I stepped out of my pants, actually shocked that I hadn't lost balance taking them off and sat on my butt or fallen flat on my face, and looked down at them, wondering if I should put them somewhere.

Wondering anything, just so as not to look at Rosalie.

But I forced my eyes up, and swallowed, taking a step toward my doom.

Just to get this over with and then crawl under a rock and die.

Rosalie frowned and shook her head.

"...enh?" I asked, being all intelligent like that.

"Panties," she commanded.

"Whaaaa?" I exclaimed, shocked and mortified.

_"Take, ... your panties, ... OFF!"_ Rosalie thundered, nearly screaming, her patience clearly gone.

I looked at her in complete surprise. She couldn't mean ...

_"But why?" _I pleaded.

Rosalie arose from her chair.

She was done playing.

She stalked toward me, death hanging about her like a cloud. I backed away from her, and promptly tripped over my own pants on the floor behind me.

She kept coming until she was right by my head, and she sunk down to her knees, looking at me beneath her with an utterly-controlled look of fury in her eyes.

"Baby," she said very calmly, very quietly. "Here is what is going to happen. I am going to give the orders, and you are going to obey them, without question. I am going to spank the fuck out of you, then I'm going to wash out your fucking dirty mouth with soap, and then you are going to be grounded until such time that I feel that I no longer want to fucking kill you whenever I even _think_ about what you said to me. Now, you can choose to go along with this plan, or you can choose not to, but either way, this is what will transpire."

"Now," she brought her hand to my shoulder, and I almost screamed in terror at her light touch, "you can remove your panties, or I will. Either way they are coming off. So, I say to you, one last time: Take. Off. Your panties."

I looked at her preternaturally calm, impassive face, and I'm sure mine looked nothing like hers. I was panting a mile a minute, and my eyes were as big as saucers.

"Please," I begged between gasps, "Rosalie, I can't. I can't do that. I..."

Her face was without mercy.

"I..." I whimpered. "I can't. You ... please, Rosalie ... you take them off, I guess."

I turned my head away, so ashamed, so ashamed of myself, so reduced to a sniveling worm.

"Lizzie," Rosalie said quietly, "look at me."

I looked toward her, breathing shallowly, an emotional wreck.

Her left hand was resting on my shoulder. She slowly raised her right hand about a foot from my face and turned it, slowly, so that her palm was facing away from me.

Was I scared she would hit me?

I actually was just completely transfixed. I knew if she did hit me, she could hurt me really badly, but her hand just stayed there.

"Do you see my hand, Lizzie?" Rosalie asked quietly. "Look at the fingernails."

I did as she bid.

Her fingernails were closely cropped to her fingers, almost, but not quite recessed.

She sat back on her feet, her back upright, as she showed them to me.

"Esmé clipped them before they ..." She was quiet for a second, "... became what they are."

She continued more rapidly, confidently, as if having gotten over the difficult part. "She had to, for, you see, they aren't fingernails anymore: they're as hard as diamonds, and as sharp as razors. If they weren't trimmed, I would slice through metal vault door, for example, just by brushing my fingertips along its surface."

She grimaced. "Of course, Esmé just had to clip my nails _before _I got to Royce cowering in that vault, so I had to use my fists, instead, but ..."

She shrugged.

"It all ended up the same, anyway," she concluded darkly.

She took her hand away.

"Here's how I'll take off your panties, Lizzie," she said quietly, redirecting her attention to me. "I'll put you over my knee, and flay at you with these stubby fingernails until there's not a shred of cloth from your panties left on your body."

I looked up at her in terror.

"But...but..." I stuttered, "there might be some blood."

One side of her lips twitched upward in a hard half-smirk, her eyes two lumps of coal. "No, sweetie, there _will_ be _lots_ of blood. All over the place. On you. On me. The walls. The floor. The ceiling. _Everywhere."_

"But, Rosalie," I said, scared, "how will you control yourself if that hap-..."

"So, either you take them off, or I do." Rosalie was both businesslike and ironic. "I suggest you take them off."

I looked up at her, her hand gently on my shoulder.

"Oh," was all I could say.

I bit my lip. "I'll ... take them off, then, I guess," I said sadly, looking away, cowed, humiliated.

I started to scooch my butt as I hooked my thumbs around the waistband.

Rosalie's hand on my arm stopped me.

"Are you a cur?" she demanded. "Stand up!"

I realized I was looking at her, opened-mouthed, just so enclosed into myself, trying to shut everything else out in my embarrassment.

I mean, _you_ take off your panties in front of somebody else! ... _who tells you to!_

I hadn't changed in front of another soul in ... in ... I don't know how long! Ever since I learned how to dress myself, I did, and alone when I got the hang of it. I didn't dress and undress in front of Ma, and _especially _not in front of Pa. That was basically my entire life that I could remember that I had my own room where I did that, and my parents respected the closed door.

There were no separate rooms in this cabin.

I was ashen.

I breathed in. I breathed out.

She called the shots. And I was the shots. Or something like that, _God damn it!_

I was going to make it through this. I had to.

I turned on my side and Rosalie's hand slid off my shoulder, and I clumsily pushed myself up to my knees, then somehow stood. I don't know how. I was shaking all over and my limbs seemed numb and lethargic.

Rosalie face was right in front of my ... right in front of my panties.

I looked away, not even seeing the walls, and hooked my thumbs again.

I felt Rosalie shift, and looked toward her instinctively.

You know how I stood up? Like a drunkard getting up off the bar floor.

Rosalie just ... rose. She was kneeling, and then her legs straightened underneath her, and then she was standing, a head taller than me, but looking at me, down at me, eye-to-eye.

I pushed my panties down. They went over my butt, whispering across my thick bush, and then they went ... down.

They slid down to my feet so easily, ...

And I felt them go, and I felt ... _I did that ... I denuded myself._

Rosalie just kept looking at me. I waited for something from her.

It came.

"Look at that," she drawled sarcastically. "You said you couldn't take off your panties, and, _lo!_ you took off your panties."

She glared at me scornfully.

"Just for reference," she added. "I _hate_ the word 'can't' coming from your mouth when I know full well you can. You might want to remember that, hm?"

I bit my tongue. I swallowed hard. "Okay," I murmured.

_Just get through this._

She crossed her arms, waiting. Glaring. At me.

"Do I take off m-my shir-... my shir-... my sweater, too?" I asked.

I almost said 'shirt.' But if I said 'shirt,' would she not think just my sweater? would she also demand I take off my tee shirt, too?

The thing is, I wanted to keep on the sweater. My hands were cupped in front of my ... my legs, but the sweater also came down lower than my tee, and covered half the curve of my butt and half of my ... frontal.

But I didn't know what Rosalie wanted me to do.

She glared down at me, then shrugged. "Suit yourself."

She turned her back to me, and returned to her chair, then sat and waited.

I followed quickly, trying not to think, keeping my sweater on, but pulling the hem of it down over my front, feeling the air between my legs and on my behind as I scurried to her.

I gave her impassive face a quick look, and then ducking my head, draped myself over her.

Her left arm came to rest over my shoulder blades. It was there lightly, but ask me if I could move.

I felt like I was in a very loosely closed vise, or in a machine press.

"No lecture, baby," Rosalie said dispassionately. "There's no point. You won't hear anything I say, anyway. But I do give you permission to scream, if you like, or to beg."

"It won't make any difference."

She said this with absolutely no emotion in her voice.

_She gives me permission? _I thought affronted.

And then the first strike came, without warning.

_Thwack!_

"Oh, my God!" I gasped involuntarily.

Rosalie's hand had come down on my left cheek, and it felt like ...

I don't know _what_ it felt like, okay? I had never felt that before. All I knew was that it hurt! It felt like someone had taken a two-by-four and hit me with the flat side of the board. Hard.

But it also felt cold, and hard, not like wood-hard, but like marble-hard, and smooth.

I knew it would be painful. But if she were hitting this hard, I don't think I could last more than five or so smacks.

"Just gauging your tolerance before we begin," she explained.

"Well," I complained bitterly, "that was ha-..."

_THWACK!_

"aaaaa-eeeeeeeeeeee!" I screamed.

If the first lick was painful, I don't know what that just was. I think I almost heard the wind whistling from her hand coming up off my left cheek, then coming down so hard on my right cheek I thought I was going to die from the pain.

No, that's wrong. I wasn't thinking. I was screaming.

For a while.

Rosalie waited.

"Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God," I cried over and over again when I finally could hear what I was saying.

"That was the first one." Rosalie announced, like it was the first ... something.

_I don't care what is was the first of, okay? For God's sake!_ I thought the other one was the first one. I thought I could survive for a little while if the licks were like the other one.

This one?

That's it. Game over. We are done here.

"Rosalie," I begged. "Oh, my God. Oh, God, please stop. I..."

_THWACK! _Her hand came down on my left cheek.

I screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed.

_THWACK!_ Right cheek.

This time — _Oh, my God! _— she didn't wait for me to stop screaming, so the blinding agony didn't recede from my eyes from the last one. The pain of this one bled right into the last one, and my screaming from the last one just tripled in intensity when the pain hit me from this one.

How many smacks was that?

I don't know. When the first one was so God-awful painful you lose track of yourself, counting them becomes pointless.

But I did know I was an utter and complete mess. Spit and snot were flying _up_ my face because I was draped over her, so my head was down, and those mixed o-so-nicely with my tears that I squeezed out when I shut my eyes so hard with the blow came.

And the sweater?

Now I regretted keeping that on. Sweat had pooled in my armpits, and the sweater worked _wonderfully_ in drawing heat from the now roaring fire in the stove. Sweat created rivers from my armpits, trickling down my arms and over my elbows and dripping off my fingertips. But not only from my armpits, no: it seemed sweat was just coming out of nowhere and was tickling my tummy and ribs and was pooling around my spine, and yeah, okay, was between my legs and rubbing between my butt cheeks, and was ...

It was itching me between my titties, but it was also on them, and it teased me on my breasts and I felt droplets of sweat on my nipples, and that felt uncomfortable and embarrassing and just wrong.

The tee shirt wasn't a tee shirt anymore. It was a sopping wet cloth wrapped so tightly to my body that it was a second skin that didn't like my first, real, skin underneath it, so it bunched and slid in the most embarrassing and unpleasant and contrary directions.

You know how I got to feel all this?

Rosalie had let me.

I finally realized and was aware that she had stopped.

"Oh, my God!" I gasped. "Please, Rosalie, please stop. Lemme up, please. Lem-..."

_THWACK!_

I screamed.

_THWACK!_

_Oh, my God!_

_THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWAAACK! THWAAACK!_

What was _so unfair _—if I had a functioning brain to analyze it — was that those last five licks weren't light quick ones. No, they were _harder_ than the first one and just kept getting harder.

The last two stung so badly I felt them, the heat of them, vibrating through my whole body, not just in my butt, but in my front and down my legs and up through my chest and up and out through my arms.

I was in agony.

Rosalie lifted me up off her lap, holding me on my arms, just below my shoulders like I was a rag doll. That's exactly how I felt like, because I was blubbering helplessly.

"Had enough?" Rosalie asked casually.

"Oh, God! Yes, please, Rosalie, please!" I screamed.

"Funny," she replied without humor, "because I'm just getting started."

She looked at me coolly. "What would you do to have this stop?"

"Anything!" I cried. "Anything! Please!"

"Anything, huh?" Rosalie smiled cruelly.

"Yes!" I cried desperately.

"Lie to me," Rosalie commanded.

My breath caught in my throat.

I hung my head.

"Just one little lie," she wheedled. "Just tell me you didn't say it, and you're off my lap."

"Rosalie, please..." I implored.

"'Rosalie, please,'" she imitated my words, but not my tone, for she said them so calmly. "'I didn't say it,'" she added helpfully. "That's all you need to say, baby."

I was trying to look away, but she brought her head down and looked at me right in the eye, no matter where I tried to look, and with her hands on my arms, she just turned my whole body so that no matter how much I tried to turn my head away, she was always right in front of me, looking into my averted eyes.

"Hm?" she prompted. "You didn't say it, right, sweetie?"

The tears fell.

"I... did...say it," I wailed.

"Yup," she said easily, "you did."

And she turned me back over her lap, and right then:

_THWACK!_

"Aaaaaaahhhhhhhiiiiiiieeeeee!" I screamed.

God, that hurt.

_THWACK!_

No, I was wrong. That one hurt more. I think. I was screaming so loudly, it was affecting my ability to think, but not my ability to feel, because the pain came, then went away, but then came back with a vengeance.

You would think you'd get used to it.

You don't.

I screamed and screamed.

"So," Rosalie said.

_THWACK!_

I cried out in agony.

"What would you be willing to do..."

_THWACK!_

"Hm?"

_THWACK! THWACK!_

_"Anything!" _I screamed. "Please, oh, God, Rosalie, _anything!"_

"We've already been down that road, sweetie." Rosalie chided. "You said you'd do anything, but then you didn't. That coin's been weighed and found to be dross."

She paused then said with more feeling, more anger in her words: "What,... would you,... be willing,... to do? Right now." Then she snarled: "Right now."

"I..." I began.

_THWAAAAACK!_

_"Aahhhhaaahahaaaaa!" _I screamed, in agony.

"Yes?" Rosalie asked.

"I..." I said.

_THWAAACK!_

_"Oh, GOD! OH! GOD! Rosalie, PLEASE!" _I cried.

_"Yes?" _she demanded angrily.

"I..." I whispered...

... and flinched hard, expecting the blow.

It didn't come.

"Oh, God," I whimpered. "Oh, God, please, Rosalie, what do you want me to do, please, tell me."

"I notice you haven't been saying 'fuck' all that much since we started this little corrective action," she noted. "Do you find it efficacious?"

"Yes," I whispered.

My arms were useless; they just hung there. My entire body was wracked in pain, and I had no idea why, because she was only spanking my butt, but my whole body cried out to me in agony.

"Hm. That's nice." Rosalie commented dryly.

_THWACK!_

_"AAAAAAhhoh my god my god omygod!" _I cried weakly, although the pain hurt even more.

"Ya ever gonna say that word again?" Rosalie slurred.

_THWACK!_

_"Nooo! NEVER!" _I screamed.

If Rosalie was getting that Back East accent, she must've really been losing it.

Me? I lost it a _long_ time ago. It was all her now, because I was beyond helpless.

"'Never,' huh?' she demanded.

_THWACK!_

_"Yessssssth! NEVER! Please, Rosalie! I promise."_ I begged.

"You promise?" she snarled.

_THWACK!_

_"YESSSS!" _I cried.

This seemed to displease her.

_"Say!"_ _THWACK!_

_"You God-damned!" THWACK!_

_"PROMISE!" THWACK!_

_"I promise!" _I screamed. "I promise! I promise! I promise!"

"You sure?" _THWACK!_

_"YES!" _I pleaded, then added as fast as I can: "I promise, Rosalie, please, oh, God! I promise!"

It stopped.

I breathed. I breathed bubbles through my mouth and bubbles through the snot in my nose.

I was lifted up, gently.

Rosalie regarded me, both critical and cool.

"You promised, baby," she stated. "You just made an eternal promise. Do you understand?"

I was panting, trying to catch my breath, and trying to hear her words above the ringing in my ears and the hammering of my heart and the bellows that were my lungs.

I finally gasped out a very weak "yes."

If she weren't holding me up, I would have fell over and hit my head on the floor.

She looked at me carefully, then said a grave and curt, "Good."

I started to breathe a sigh of relief.

That's when she put me right back over her knee.

_THWACK!_

_"Aaaahhh! Why, Rosalie! Why?" _I screamed. "I promised! I'll be good! I promised!"

_THWACK!_

_"Aaaaahhh!" _I cried, now totally lost. And I mean, 'lost' like I was losing control of my mind. I was losing control of my body. I was losing my grip on reality

"I'm afraid you're under some misapprehension," Rosalie said calmly.

_THWACK!_

I screamed and cried in utter confusion.

"Ask me if I give a shit about your promise, hm?" she said coolly.

A gurgling sound came from my voice, and I tasted bile.

"Let me put it another way," she said.

_THWACK!_

I screamed helplessly. I wish it would stop. I wish it would hurt even a tiny little bit less. But she just seemed to know the exact pacing and the exact amount of force to leave me hovering in agony, and then when I thought I could contain it, or bear it, just push it all again right to the front of my mind.

I had no thoughts. I had only pain.

"Am I beating the _shit_ out of your ass, baby?" she asked coolly.

"Yes!" I cried.

_"WRONG!" _she shouted.

_THWACK!_

I screamed again, and then my body did a little tiny tug inside.

Oh, no. Oh, God, no! I just peed. Please, I just peed. Don't ... don't ... just ... just hold on ... just, just hold on...

_THWACK!_

"That's not your ass I'm beating, baby," she said.

And ...

... I let go.

I was crying helplessly now, so ashamed as I peed and peed.

Rosalie didn't notice? Or just ignored it?

"Your ass is mine now," she said factually.

_THWACK!_

_Oh, God!_

There was no mercy from her. She didn't give me a chance to be embarrassed that I peed all over her legs. She didn't care. She just kept whipping me with measured, agonizing strokes.

"And if I wanna beat this ass,"

_THWACK!_

_"Then I'll fucking beat this fucking ass,"_

_THWACK!_

_"UNTIL I'M DONE BEATING IT!"_

_THWACK!_

_"YOU GET ME?"_

_"YESSSSS!" _I screamed. "OH, GOD! PLEASE! ROSALIE! YES! OH, GOD! oh, god, oh ... oh, my god."

Rosalie lifted me up again, me facing her. I think. I could barely see.

"Oh, God," I whimpered. "Oh, God."

"Do you know what 'your ass is mine' means, Lizzie?" Rosalie asked quietly.

All I could do is pant. I could barely hold my head up.

"I asked you a question," her tone became menacing. "I don't like repeating myself. I asked you: 'Do you know.' 'What.' '"your ass is mine.'" 'Means?' Lizzie."

I tried to focus.

"Lizzie. Do you know what 'your ass is mine' means?"

Rosalie was just as cool as ever. Just as ...

Oh, God.

Just as cruel as ever.

"I..." I whispered, tasting the tears and the snot as it went into my mouth.

Think. Please, God, think. What does 'your ass is mine' mean?

"It means ..."

Oh, godogodgodogodogod. Oh, God.

Oh, God, help me.

"It means m-my ass is yours, Rosalie." I said hopelessly.

Rosalie's eyebrows shrugged and her lips turned down.

"No," she said.

Oh, no. Oh, God. My mouth tasted bitter as I awaited what my wrong guess would earn me.

"No, it means, Lizzie, that _you_ are _mine, _you got it? You, your heart, your soul, your breath, your body, your mouth, your thoughts, your ass, ... all mine. You. You got it? You are _mine."_

She held me gently above her lap, my legs draped over her legs, holding me up to her at eye level.

"Yes," I whispered, despondent.

"Say it, Lizzie," Rosalie growled. "Say that you're mine."

I took in a breath. I let it out.

I did that two more times.

_I am hers._

I let go.

I looked into her eyes.

"I am yours, Rosalie," I whispered.

Two tears fell. I looked away, and shut my eyes hard as more tears fell.

"No," she said, displeased. "You didn't get it."

_Ah. Oh. Why? What did I do wrong?_

"Look at me," she commanded.

I looked, biting my lip.

"You are mine?" she asked in clarification.

I nodded my head.

She waited, looking angry.

"Yes," I said helplessly. "I'm yours, Rosalie, you can ..."

"Stop." she barked.

I stopped.

"Lizzie, _look. at. me, God DAMN IT!"_

I hadn't even realized I'd looked away. I looked back at her, focusing and unfocusing at the same time.

"If you're mine," she said to me, "then you don't have _fucking permission to LOOK away from me without FUCKING PERMISSION! GOT IT?"_

She said 'fucking permission' twice.

I was just wondering if you noticed that.

"Yes."

That was all I could say to her.

"Good," she said coolly, and nodded just ever so slightly encouragingly. "Now. You are mine. Say it."

She just ...

She just said it like it was gonna happen. She said it like I was hers, and all I had to do was say it.

I was hers.

"I am yours, Rosalie," I said humbly.

"Ah! AH! LIZZIE!" Rosalie warned.

I gasped and collapsed, my head lolling. I was panting.

"Look at me, sweetie," she said gently.

"I can-..."

_"LOOK AT ME!"_ she screamed.

I looked.

Her hands slid up, and I slid down.

My head was now cradled in her hands.

Just like outside, before, when I fainted.

Just like this morning — _Oh, my God! Was it THIS MORNING? _— when she held my head in her hands, telling me I was beautiful, and then telling me that this was the way she would kill me.

"Don't even _think_ about moving those eyeballs away from me this time!" Rosalie glowered, then smirked.

"You are mine, Lizzie," Rosalie said softly, gently.

Then nodded her head up, once.

I breathed.

"Lizzie?" she prompted.

"I am ... yours, Rosalie. All yours."

I breathed.

She looked into my eyes intently.

The tears were falling from my wide open eyes, looking directly into hers.

I felt myself being pulled into her, and I felt ...

... This time, I felt her being pulled into me.

I felt us becoming one.

I wonder if she's gonna kiss me now?

"That's good, Lizzie," she smiled warmly, "because you stink."

"Ah-hah," I gasped. "Ah-haha, Augh-hah."

I didn't know whether I was laughing or crying.

"No, really, baby," she said. "You smell like tenderized meat."

Her jaw worked, and she swallowed.

"Heh, ah-haha."

Now I knew what I was doing. I was laughing _and_ crying.

And hiccoughing.

_"Hic."_

_Lovely._ I thought.

_"Hic," _I hiccoughed.

"This is no laughing matter, baby," Rosalie scolded. "This is serious."

"Isht's okay, Rosalie," I sniffled, "I'm, _hic, _yours."

_God damn hiccoughs!_

Rosalie looked into me so intently. "Yes, baby, it's okay, for you are mine."

"All yours." I said in a sing-song voice.

"You're all _mine, _Lizzie," she said so quietly this predatory snarl and purr, claiming me.

It felt ... freeing, in a way, kinda.

_"Hic,"_

_"Oh, for God's, hic, sake!" _I shouted.

Rosalie sniggered, and she smirked at me.

Her eyes were wanton, pitch black, and the look she gave me could've turned a saint into a sinner in three seconds flat, depending on how fast her panties hit the floor.

"You are _so_ cute!" she sighed happily. "Can I eat your face?"

I didn't know if she were serious or if she were joking. Or ... both?

"No, Rosalie, you can't eat my face," I sighed wearily, the only thing keeping me upright were her hands.

"But you're _so cute,_ Lizzie! Just let me eat your face, hm?" She entreated.

I rolled my eyes. _Jeez! This woman! WHAT was I gonna do with her!_

"Oh, c'mon, Rose, I'm not food, you know!"

One second. One breath.

Rosalie's shocked face.

Two seconds. Two breaths.

Utter stillness.

Three seconds. Three brea-...

"Lizzie," she said very coolly. "It's 'Rosalie.' Not 'Rose.' 'Rosalie.'"

She raised her head, ever so slightly.

I shook my head in her hands, and — would you look at that? — I started crying again.

"Lizzie," she warned. "It's 'Rosalie.' No one calls me 'Rose,' not after Royce did the night he killed me. Do you hear me? Not Edward, nor any of the Cullens, not you, sweetie. Not anyone. I am Rosalie Lillian Hale. Understand?"

"Rosalie," I said sadly, "I am yours. I am your Lizzie. But you are my Rose, and ..."

I gasped and sobbed.

"... and you always will be. You are my Rose, Rosalie."

I shut my eyes. The tears fell, and the breaths came in easy gasps. She was Rosalie and she was my Rose, all at the same time, and I couldn't explain it.

"And," I sobbed. "I'm sorry Royce did that, that he hurt you so bad that you hate everybody. I'm sorry. But you are my Rose, and you always will be ... and ..."

I just looked at her, beyond despair, beyond crying. I was just gasping in _her_ through my opened mouth, because I couldn't breathe through my stuffed nose _at all._

And I was just ... _giving_ myself to her, entirely. Me, in her hands, just breathing her in, breathing her out, and giving myself totally to her, resting entirely in her hands.

"Lizzie, ..." Rosalie whined-sighed plaintively.

Was it her last warning before she crushed my head between her hands?

"Yours, Rosalie. Always."

I wanted to say 'Rose' but my tongue wouldn't obey. I was hers. I was Rosalie's. But she was my Rose. And I didn't know how to say it.

Yes, I did.

"My Rose." I said.

She held me, my Rose, in her hands.

She held me.

* * *

**A/N: **From the Latin, _totus tuus: _"All yours."


	74. A Rose by Any Other Name

**Chapter Summary: **What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet... or so I've heard. A Rosalie by any other name, like, say: _'Rose' _would be just as bi-... _bossy! I was gonna say 'bossy,' I swear!_

* * *

"Baby," Rosalie said warningly, "it's 'Rosalie.'"

I looked into her eyes, not challenging her; no: I was looking into her soul. She was serious and determined.

I shook my head again. "No," I whispered, barely even managing that as my screaming and crying under her hands had left me drained and nearly mute.

My throat hurt. My head hurt, and let's not talk about other parts of my body, okay?

"It's 'Rose.'" I said.

No, that's not it. It's not 'It's "Rose"' but how do I tell her she is _my_ Rose?

I didn't know how to do that. I was hers, she could do with me whatever she wanted. And she just did. I couldn't. There was no way I could 'do' anything to her — I didn't want to — but she was my Rose, the Rose of my heart.

How to I tell her that? Something I _knew_ in my bones, but without her ...

She was this close, this close to losing it. I tell her this thing I knew, in the whole universe of everything she knew and I didn't, ... how do I tell her this without her just totally rejecting it, rejecting me, and screaming at me and belittling me to even think that?

For who was I? A nobody from a nowhere town. And who was she?

She had Rochester and the Cullens at her feet.

Who was I to say anything, particularly anything like that?

She examined me critically, my head in her hands.

"I could beat this out of you, too," she remarked thoughtfully. "I could _make_ you address me solely as 'Rosalie,' and you know I could."

"No, Rosalie," I whispered, "I don't think you can."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. I had just challenged her.

I don't think she liked being challenged. I don't know if she ever _had_ been.

"You can't make me lie, Rosalie," I said defensively, "and you can't take this away from me, either."

_You can't take this away from ... us._ I thought.

Why didn't I just say that? I realized that it was 'us' that I was fighting for, not 'me.'

I was fighting for _us_.

She appraised me. "Are you willing to find that out?" she demanded.

I looked into her deadly serious eyes.

I shuddered. "I don't want to."

I didn't want her to beat me until she stopped, which in this case would be never. I just wanted her to — for once in her _God-damned life _— to accept this as the way things are gonna be around here from now on.

I mean, what's the big deal? Everybody had nicknames. I did. It was 'Lizzie' not 'Elizabeth.' 'Elizabeth' just sounded so ... _odd, _so _formal, _so _not me, _so not me, in fact, that I even had to dredge that name up from memory — _Elizabeth Lucia Hale _— to remember that it was my name now. But even before, it was _Bella,_ and everybody just _knew_ that 'Bella' was my name, and would've been surprised, shocked even, to know that my name was actually _Isabella Swan,_ not 'Bella,' a name which wasn't on my birth certificate nor on any official document of my name.

'Bella' was just who I was. 'Lizzie' is just who I am.

What's the big deal with 'Rose'? Just 'Rose,' not the super-formal and harsh 'Rosalie'?

It was just a name, wasn't it? No big deal.

But I knew it was a big deal. It was for her — _big time, _obviously — and ... it was for me, too.

Somehow 'Rosalie' is how she always is to everybody, and, well, 'Rose' is how she is to me.

Sometimes.

Some very, very rare times.

Or, at least, that's how I see she is, and how she could be, if she weren't so mean, and angry, and exacting and ... well, just so damned _Rosalie_ all the time!

I swear.

I mean, put it that way, and calling her 'Rose' is a compliment, kinda. Isn't it?

"I'm not asking what you _want, _or, more precisely, what you said you _don't want,"_ her hard voice interrupted my meditation on the 'beautiful flower' she was, "I'm asking what you are _willing to do. _Are you willing to fight for this?"

"You know I will," I said quietly.

I still didn't know why I had to, though.

She looked into my eyes. Hard.

Something happened, inside her. I didn't see anything happen at all, her expression didn't change, her body didn't change, but ... I saw something happen _inside _her.

Her hands moved down, and she picked me up easily, lifting me up by my armpits.

... my sweaty, stinky armpits, and _(don't even think it, Lizzie), ... hairy, now. Ick. _

_(Shoot, I thought it.)_

_(Ew.)_

She pulled the tub-basin from out of the corner by the door to the center of our room, our one room in our little cabin — _home, _our tiny home — and deposited me gently into the tub.

No matter how gentle it was, I still hissed in shock of the pain of my very tender(ized? ... let's not think about that) butt hitting the cold metal.

Rosalie had turned, when she was putting me down, but she turned right back at my hiss and examined me closely. I felt, somehow, her radiating concern, but once she saw that all I was doing was grimacing, and not — what? — screaming my head off in agony, she let me be, clinging to the side of the basin as she went to the stove.

She tested the water in the big pot, and grimaced herself, but her grimace was with displeasure.

"It's tepid," she said apologetically with me.

I didn't particularly care about the temperature of the water at present. I had had much, much worse while bathing, and very recently at that, too.

"So, you're gonna let me call you 'Rose'?" I asked carefully.

Rosalie frowned and crossed her arms, glaring at me.

There were just a ton of grimaces today, weren't there?

"I am not a person who countenances the _let_ of anything," she seethed.

I mulled on this.

I asked again, (mostly) undaunted. "So ..." I said cautiously, "do I have your permission?"

She crossed her arms again, and said angrily, "And if I don't give it?"

I noticed that when she was lecturing me, her hands were at her sides, or she was gesticulating, or pointing at me.

I noticed, too, when she was closing herself off from me, she crossed her arms, like she was protecting herself from my assault, of all things. Like she was walling herself off from me.

That hurt. I looked down.

"You are _such_ a recalcitrant!" she muttered angrily.

"It's not that, Rosalie," I pleaded.

"Oh," she countered disbelievingly, "then what is it?"

"It's ..." I said.

But then, what was it?

"It's mine," I said finally. "It's something you can't take away from me. It's ... no." I paused, then started over: "We've ... we've been through a lot, Rosalie .. Ro—..." My tongue wouldn't say what I was fighting for. "... and I am your Lizzie, and you are ... my Rose." There. I said it. "This is ours. This is us."

"This is us now," I dared a peek at her. She was glaring at me, coolly.

Then I dared to continue. "... and you can't take it away. It's there now."

"I don't think you are in a position to tell me what I can or can't do," she stated, arms crossed. "I can blot out this entire region of the this little, tiny corner of the world. I can erase it, and no one will know that it had existed."

I closed my eyes and hung my head.

I had no idea why she was doing this. And who was she doing this to? To me? No. She had to see I was set now. She was doing this to herself. She was hurting herself, and I had no idea why she was fighting so hard, just to hurt herself.

"Yes, Rose," I sighed sadly, closing my eyes, but I was surprised her name was coming easier on my tongue. "You can do all this, you can wipe me out and this, I don't know, cabin, and whatever else, and nobody will ever know."

I reopened my eyes. "But you'll know." I said. "You'll know, and even if nobody else knows, it's there, Rosalie. It happened, and you can't change that. I can write it in my journal to remember this, and you can take it and rip it up and rewrite it to whatever you like after you've killed me. But it happened, Rosalie. It happened." I said quietly. "And you can't change that."

I breathed in, then let it out slowly, looking at her.

Rosalie pursed her lips as she glared at me.

But behind her obviously angry demeanor, I saw something there. Was it a measure of respect?

"Well, well, Lizzie," she remarked ironically, "is that a spine I see you growing?"

I blushed and looked down at the rim of the basin, stretched and bent over an a curl, for my benefit no less. I felt like making an angry retort. I felt I had to stand up for myself.

But I already did, and this was so, so tiring. I'd been beaten like a child, and felt like one. I deserved it. I was a little ... nothing, and Rosalie had every right to belittle me.

"Yeah," I said humbly, "who'da thought, you know?"

Rosalie came right down and crouched in front of me. Even crouching, she was taller than me. I felt that she made sure I knew that, or maybe that was just her: every situation she was in, she was on top, the leader, the boss.

Must be exhausting to be so bossy; it tired me out, just thinking about _her_ doing that all the time, and as for me? No, thanks. I never understood the popularity thing in school that so attracted girls like moths to the flame, and at home? Well, Pa was the sheriff of the County, of course he was in charge, and I was just fine with following along.

I never wanted to be in charge of anything nor anybody, even if I made noises about it sometimes, 'Oh, if I were in charge, I would so ...'

Everybody does that: complain, and then say they would do better. But I knew better than that. I saw what people in charge went through, and I knew anybody who said they'd do better were just talkers, and if they were given that power and put in charge, they'd just screw up everything way worse than what it was.

'They' meaning 'me.' Me telling people what to do? Everybody looking up to me? Looking _at_ me?

I shuddered.

Rosalie lifted my chin making me look into her eyes.

"I did," she said quietly. She released my chin, and my head fell back to the side of the basin. "It looks good on you," she said, then added: "a backbone."

"Yeah," I sighed, not feeling victorious at all, just feeling bone tired, defeated. "Thanks." I added, and that even took everything I had to say it.

I was all curled up into myself. The basin was a large tub, I don't know how many gallons, but meant for standing in, or not even really that. But sitting in? No.

I was all scrunched up into myself. But I kind of liked this cocooned position, my knees up to my chest, head lolling on the curved side of the basin. All I needed was a pillow, and I would sleep and sleep right here, regardless of the crick in my neck I'd be sure to get.

I closed my eyes, and felt myself nodding off as I felt Rosalie regarding me, silly me, falling asleep in the tub. She was probably laughing at me and my foolishness right now.

"Let's get you cleaned up," she said gently.

I murmured some assent. I would've agreed to anything now.

I felt her leave my side to do just that: to clean me up, to take care of me.

My Rose.

* * *

**A/N: **Apologies to those who read these two chapters combined as one. I've written 15k words so far for this chapter (in twelve sections, if you must know), and realized last night a three am that I had to split this up. Well, I didn't quite split it up correctly, so last night I published two chapters as one. This is a (slight) chapter reorganization along unity of concepts. The re-realized chapter 75 is coming right up, and, hm? A chapter every day this long weekend? We shall see.

love, geophf


	75. If I were a boy

**Chapter Summary: **So. My little one thinks she can ask me out on a date ... and _as a boy?_ This'll be... interesting. Hm. But I wonder, if she did, given different circumstances, given none of this having happened, would I give her the time of day? Or the brush off? Or ... worse? A poor sheriff's daughter asking Rosalie Hale out? She wouldn't've stood a chance, the poor girl. After all, I'm not Vera to stoop so low. Which means I would've ended up with Royce. Again.

When I say, 'the poor girl,' whom do I mean?

**A/N:** Reorganized the previously published chapter 74 into the new, smaller chapter 74 ("A Rose by Any Other Name") and this chapter ("If I were a boy..."). Apologies for the reorganization. I blame breaking up the one, long writing spell of fifteen-thousand words into smaller chapters at three am as the culprit. Won't happen again... Today, that is. Maybe.

* * *

I felt Rosalie leave my side, and I heard her filling pitchers with water. Just as easy as you please.

Everything was simple and obvious for Rosalie; ever notice that?

And everything was hard for me. Hard for me to understand, and hard for me to do. Did you ever notice that as well? We couldn't possibly be more opposite than if we tried.

I mean, like she hinted before, if I were a boy, we'd be completely opposite. But besides that.

I mean? Me? A boy? I'd have to be in sports and have all my guy friends and have a girl friend and affect a bored indifference to everything and not read at all because I couldn't look smart, because that's a stigma for boys for some reason, nor talk about anything or otherwise people would talk about me.

Uh ... well, actually, even when I talked about anything being a just a girl, they _still _talked about me.

But being a boy was just so ... _uncomplicated._ So ... _boring!_ And I suppose that had its appeal, without your body going haywire on you every month. Boys just had their _thing_ for equipment, and, okay,_ eww!_ But they didn't have to worry over everything like we girls did, like, for example: what we'd wear today and what everybody thought about us. Boys just slumped into school wearing the same sweater and jeans they did the day before, _every day!_ If a girl did that? She'd be so ostracized and vilified she'd quit school or kill herself the first week! ... and it didn't matter if a girl didn't have pretty dresses, like the other girls did, and how did they have these pretty, pretty dresses, each one different, every day, during these hard times? How did they not have the same pair of jeans and only a few shirts and sweaters? ... like the daughter of the sheriff on the County government's payroll.

And the County didn't pay much to a man looking after his only daughter ... small family, right? So they don't need much at all. Even if his job description was to put his life on the line, every day. He didn't, but that's what the County wanted him to do. And for how much? A few dollars each day?

And he did this without complaint. I never heard him say one bad word, ever, about the hard times, or making ends meet, or him hating his job, because he didn't. He just did what he did, and he got paid what he got paid. And we made ends meet, as best as we could. So I went to school in the same shirts and jeans, and didn't mind what the other girls thought.

I tried not to mind it. I tried not to think what their looks at me meant, then the eyes sliding over me, and past me, not seeing the poor girl of no consequence.

I wasn't their girl friend, after all. I wasn't popular. And I dressed like a boy, because that was all that we could afford. I had one dress for church when we went years ago for Christmas or Easter or whatever. It didn't fit anymore; I had shot up a bit (not 'out', 'up.' If I got lost in one of the farmer's fields, one of the bachelor farmers would pound me into the ground by the crops, mistaking me for a bean pole, and thanks for that memory). So for all intents and purposes, I _was_ one of the boys, who didn't hang with the boys, and wasn't sought after by the girls like the other boys were. I was a — oh, this is just _great! _— 'boy' ... but I wasn't.

Because boys could just go anywhere they wanted, take any class they wanted, play in the sports and have everybody clap at them, _and like it!_ and say whatever hurtful thing they wanted and everybody was fine with that: _'Oh, that Bella Swan is in the library all the time, she doesn't have any friends, so don't ask her out because there're cooler girls that talk to you and are interested in you, and not just in herself and in the book she's reading.'_

I mean, I never heard the boys say that, but I'm not stupid. I could see them look at me curiously in class or in school, and I'd see their girl friends lean up to their ear and whisper as they looked at me scornfully.

If I were a boy, I'd be cool, and have my guy friends and everybody be cool with me, because I'd've been in sports all my life and have my teammates and have a girl friend who'd watch me during baseball games and I'd make a double play, just like Frank Widmann, and instead of my girl friend just sitting in the bleachers, bored, reading her book, she's see me make the play, and smile, and wave and be ...

Oh, God.

And be _proud_ of me.

If I were a boy, there'd be somebody proud of me, not everybody avoiding me and whispering about me behind my back.

But I'm just a girl with her books, and her plain clothes that she couldn't afford to buy dresses and _different kinds_ of dresses from the Sears catalog and wear them into school every day and have my girl friends fawn over me and compliment the colors and style I chose today.

No, I was that girl in the bleachers, bored, reading her book when Frank made that double play.

No wonder why he high-tailed it to that Susie Swanson after that game.

If I were a boy, I would have left me in the dirt, too, and in a heart beat.

... and ...

And, ... I just realized this.

If I were a boy, I wouldn't have ...

I mean, Susie Swanson is nice and all. She's cute, and warm, and friendly, and I can see why Frank went for her, instead of me.

But if I were a boy?

I would've asked Rosalie out.

_Oh, ... my God!_

I just realized what I would've done. That Rosalie Hale coming into town with her family like that, and her and Edward like ... _hissing_ at each other? Obviously brother and sister or very, very, _very_ much not interested in each other. I would've seen that, as a boy, who was looking, because, c'mon, seriously, which boy _isn't?_ — except at me, but let's not go there — and I would've walked right up to their door, knocked on it, very bravely ...

And asked her out on a date.

I would've.

I swear.

Because I don't care what anybody else thinks, I mean, _thinks more,_ so they could've just hid in the bushes and watched and whisper their vicious whispers to themselves.

_'That Bella Swan,' _or whatever my name'd been as a boy, _'what's he thinking, asking that new girl from Town out? He just got WAY too big for his britches. That is: __if__ she goes out with him, I give it two days, tops, before that Rosalie figures out she got herself a dud. But that there is a big if, because, asking Rosalie Hale out? Two tight slaps across the face is the most he could expect! You see how she glares at that Edward _— _WHAT a CATCH! _— _where does he get the __gall__ to ask her out, seeing how that Edward can't even get the time of day from her?'_

Well, they could talk! I don't care, because I'd be a boy, and I wouldn't care about what girls say amongst themselves. I wouldn't even know! I wouldn't even feel it, their eyes on my back, their judgments. I wouldn't be a girl, and feel these things, and die, a little bit, or a lot, every day under their censure.

I'd be a boy, having asked Rosalie out, scared to death that she might say 'no.'

Scared to death that she might, ... just might, say ...

'Yes.'

And ...

And, okay, I'm not ... a boy like I told her she should have. I'm not a big, ruddy, barrel-chested boy with a ready laugh and an easy smile, who'd take her anger and just laugh off her silly seriousness and fury, and pay attention to the real her, her real hurts underneath, and be gentle with her fragile ego, and be strong for her, holding her when she screamed out against the world and stupid me, but holding her, knowing that she could just take my strength when she needed it, because she really did need it, even as she railed against it, her own weakness, and my well of strength.

I wasn't that boy. I couldn't be like that. I can't even see myself pretending to be like that.

But I could be me. And ... maybe that's not enough, but ...

But, I could be shy, and quiet. A shy, quiet boy, bravely asking Rosalie out on a date.

And, we'd just ... walk, is all, into town, and maybe I'd offer my hand, because Rosalie? she wouldn't offer her hand. Not first. 'Tain't proper, and she's very proper. But maybe it'd be proper, or polite, to accept a hand offered? Maybe.

And we'd walk into town, her and me, hand in hand, or arm in arm if she wanted. And we'd go to Deb's Coffee Shop and order a root beer float, to split. She'd have to look after her figure, you see. So we'd have two spoons and two straws, and share, and would she take a spoonful of ice cream?

Of course not. She never ate anything.

And I'd wonder about that, as a boy, but, being a boy, I'd just wonder, then forget about it, right away, and not think and think and think about it, because I wouldn't be a girl, to worry about such things. No, I'd be a boy, and see that, and wonder, and then just ... let it go.

Just like Pa — God bless him — when he saw everything in me, all my failures, and he didn't worry about them or worry me to death about them. He just saw them, then let them go.

How in the world can men do that? How could Pa, year after year? Just see me, as I was, that is: the screwed up little girl I was, and just let that all go?

I wonder if girls are like girls are, because they have their mothers to worry over every little slip they ever make, all the time? I wonder ...

No, I don't wonder. Rosalie told me she's just like her mother. I guess ... I guess that's what mothers do: they make their daughters perfect.

That is: 'perfect' meaning: 'just like them.' Or just like the way they want them to be, if they were perfect.

But women — and this may be a shocker to hear — aren't perfect. So instead of mothers making their daughters perfect, they make them perfect duplicates of every single flaw they have and every single flaw they fear.

Perhaps Ma did me a favor? By leaving me to myself, instead of raising me to be just like her?

Perhaps she did something much, much worse? Because ...

Because I'm not a boy. And so, the little worrier-girl me, ... I raised me to be ... myself.

And I'm the worst person I know.

And all Pa could do is show me what it is to be a man, which didn't help me _at all_ when it came to being a woman: what I should do or how I should be.

Pa could only show me what it is to be a man. That's all he was; that's all he could do. But I'm not a man.

So the upshot is that I don't know how to be a girl, and I can't be a boy ... I don't even really want to be a boy, anyway, regardless of all their 'perks' and entitlements and the easy way they walk through everything in this world, regardless of who or what they crush in their blind arrogance.

Because ...

If I were a boy, ... I'd be a girl.

I swallowed hard at that realization. I can't even pretend to want to be something that I'm not, because it always just boomerangs right back to me being me.

Because I'm me, I can't even hope to be anything else.

And, being me?

It sucks.

It sucks bad.

Because I'm a girl who all the other girls make fun of: a slip of a girl, gawky, awkward, and a whole bunch of other weird words with double-u's in them... weak, willful, wallowing ...

God, I'm a girl who looks like a boy who needs a haircut!

A weak, wimpy girl-boy, who can't stand up for herself, and when she does she gets slapped down — _hard _— and runs right off to fantasy-land, wishing to be anywhere but here, anyone but her, but still being stuck in this little tub that isn't even a tub, stuck right here in the here and now being only 'just her' and nothing else, nothing of consequence.

Just her.

"...Lizzie?" Rosalie's voice called to me.

I sighed, just noticing now that I wasn't alone with my thoughts. _Of course,_ Rosalie was still here. _Of course, _she was talking to me. I mean, _not _'of course,' I mean, I was lucky she was speaking to me at all after what I said, and right to her face.

Somebody tells you _'fuck you!'_ ... do you ever speak to them again? Would I?

But Rosalie was still reaching out to me, even after I said that to her.

_Why?_

I wondered how long she'd been calling to me? I wondered if I could pretend not to hear her? I wondered how long I could keep that pretense up?

"Were you going to answer my question?" she asked patiently.

I was facing away from her, curled up into a ball in the tub, but in my mind I could just see her standing there, waiting, patiently, for me to answer her question, wondering to herself how long she's have to wait before she just tossed me in the river like all the other trash she'd thrown out, ...

That is: the trash she didn't burn.

"Yes," I said, then added, "what was your question?"

"You weren't listening to me at all!" she exclaimed.

I heard the smile in her annoyance.

"Uh," I contributed helpfully.

"Where did you go?" she asked, and maybe 'again,' because maybe that was her question in the first place. I didn't know.

Rosalie came around the tub and sat in front of me, examining me quizzically.

"Nowhere," I said sadly. "I'm right here..." _stuck right here in this body that's me._

She smiled patiently and tapped her temple as she said, "Yes, you're right here. But you went away... _inside._ I lost you just now. Where did you go?"

My lips quirked up in a sad, shy smile.

Ma left me, but Rosalie didn't leave me alone to myself for even one second.

I don't know whether I should hate her constant prying, her being in my head all the time, or if I should ... admire it.

After all, nobody bothered before with me, because I wasn't worth the bother.

Why was I now worth the time of day?

"Oh," I said carelessly, "I just went to my happy place, is all."

Rosalie was silent for a while, then I felt her present fill my not-field-of-view.

I opened my eyes to slits to confirm it, and, yes, there she was, in all her glory, sitting down in front of me, Indian-style again, looking into my face with interest.

She saw me looking at her, so I shut my eyes again, quickly, feeling caught.

"What is this 'happy place'?" she asked quietly, and I heard the control in her voice, the deliberation, and wondered at it. I took another peek at her, and saw her looking at me intently, before I shut my eyes again.

"Oh, nothing," I sighed sadly, "I just had a fancy, but then it involved me being me, and that pretty much killed it, so ..."

I didn't have the strength to shrug.

It was quiet for a long time. I couldn't stand her silence anymore, so I opened my eyes to look at her.

She was sitting as before, but now she looked at me sadly. When she saw me looking at her she brought her hand to my face, and very lightly brushed her fingertips across my cheek.

She smiled sadly at me.

"Those words," she said quietly, "were such a beautifully evocative description that told me absolutely nothing."

"Yeah..." I said sadly. I'm such a failure. Tell me something new.

She tilted her head to one side. "You are whose?" she asked quietly.

"Yours, Rosalie," I said despondently.

I was hers, and what I was sad about was ... I didn't even deserve that.

"Then, baby, ..." she said, "your happy place is mine, too, right?"

My lips quirked up. She had me. "Yeah, I guess so."

"So," she continued, ignoring my equivocation, "I didn't ask for your judgment on you happy place, I asked you to tell me what is it. Lizzie," she continued, determined, "please tell me what your happy place is."

At least she said _'please.'_ That was nice of her.

I smiled up at her. "I just so provide you opportunities to laugh at me, don't I?"

"Yes, you do," she said easily, then, seriously: "Thank you."

I sighed and capitulated. Now I couldn't even ask her not to laugh at me.

"Okay, Rosalie," I said, "it's like this. If I were a boy, I'd've gone right up to your place in Ekalaka, and asked you out. And maybe you'd've even've said 'yes,' and I was thinking about that, just us, and none of this ..." I waved my fingers weakly, because I couldn't wave my arm, "would've happened, 'cause ... well, I'm not Edward, nor Royce, nor that boy who'd be just right for you, but I'd be ..."

I gulped, looking into her intense, puzzled, amused, affronted eyes, and pressed forward.

"I'd be me, not big and strong and jovial just like that perfect boy'd be for you, but just this wiry, lanky kid, shy, quiet, but there for you, you know? And not mean to you, like Edward or Royce, nor like me and you shouting at each other but just ..."

I blew out a gust of air.

"... you know? Just ... there, and okay and accepting and not screaming and fighting and ..."

I looked away.

Rosalie took all this in, and smirked down at me.

"Your happy place?" she asked quietly, incredulity lacing her voice.

"Yeah," I said sadly.

"And if you were a boy ..." she tasted the words as she said them, entertaining the novelty of it. "Your girlfriend wouldn't mind you dumping her for the new hottie that moved into town, the current flavor that caused a stir when we swept into town?"

"Me?" I asked shocked, "Have a girlfriend?"

That thought never entered my mind. I stuck to myself as a girl, so I just assumed I would do that as boy, too.

She smirked down at me at my outburst. "Even better. So you don't have a girlfriend, my little boy-Lizzie; and," she added not kindly, "I'd wager you never have had, so where did you magically work up the courage to brazen your way to the Hale's doorstep? I'm curious."

She did sound curious, in that condescending way of hers.

I looked down at my hands. "You saw me, Rosalie. I walked right up to your door and let myself in. Several times. Boy or girl, I'm still me. It would've been hard, and scary for me, because it was, when I did it, but I did do it, because I'm ... me."

Rosalie didn't shift at all, but I saw that calculating, measuring look come into her eyes as she watched me saying this.

Then she snorted. "You'd ask me out? This I've got to see."

I couldn't look into her scornful eyes. "If I were a boy, I'd do it." I whispered petulantly, but so softly that I was only staying it to myself.

"Well, then, do it, little boy." Rosalie commanded. "Ask me out."

Of course, she'd hear what I said, with that hearing of hers. And even if she didn't hear me say it, all she'd have to do is see it written in my mind.

And, of course, she'd hold my words against me, like she always did.

"What? Now?" I asked, surprised, although I shouldn't've been.

"No time like the present," she said irritated, "or did you want to beef up your manly arms with free weights first, Miss Staller?"

Ouch. I didn't know I was stalling. That's what it looked like to her, though. I swallowed my bitterness, ashamed of my cowardice.

"Rosalie, ..." I began.

"What are you doing?" she cut in sharply.

"A-asking you out!" I shot back angrily.

"Not lying nearly face down in a tub, you aren't," she shot right back, affronted. "Sit up and face me like a boy would ask a girl out _properly."_

She was just heaping on the hurts with her stinging words.

"Rosalie," I entreated. "I can't. I can barely feel my arms; they hurt so much they're like ... numb."

Rosalie regarded me dispassionately, then leaned back, shaking her bangs out of her eyes and resting on her hands.

"Well, then," she said coldly, "you're not going to ask me out, if you can't face me and look me in the eye."

She was giving me an out from this cruel exercise? I supposed I could take it, if she were.

Her cutting voice interrupted my thoughts: "So much for your bold proclamation. Is this how much your word is worth?"

I sighed.

She wasn't giving me an out. I don't think she ever would.

I regarded the tub floor. It looked so ... heavy, just pulling me down into it. And I looked at my weak, little spaghetti arms, not at all beefy nor manly as Rosalie implied with her teasing.

They didn't look they could manage to lift a feather.

Well, good thing little ol' me is a featherweight.

I lifted my head slightly and let the arm I was resting on fall to the tub bottom, just as I let my other arm resting on my tummy fall just a bit more.

All that: just letting my arms fall, took so much effort.

Now the hard part.

I pushed against the tub floor.

Nothing happened. The floor didn't recede, and my head didn't lift from tub lip.

I looked up at Rosalie pleadingly. "Help?"

Her eyes narrowed. She looked down at her hand and examined her fingernails. "No," she said. "I don't think so, little drama queen. You sit up, or ..." she shrugged, "... just quit, like the quitter you claimed me to be, little quitter."

My face burned with fury. _Her? Her_ calling me a _drama queen?_

If that doesn't take the cake!

_And _calling me a quitter, too. I had thought she didn't even notice that _I_ had called her a quitter. But she did: only to use it against me.

I pushed myself up into a seated position in the basin.

It was hard. But that was nothing to the searing pain I felt when I shifted by body to sit on my super-sensitive butt, then, after that, the slow, continuously nagging burn on my posterior seated on the basin.

I did it.

Oh, well. As they say: no pain, no gain.

I glared at her. "Rosalie ..." I said forcefully.

In a flash, Rosalie straightened up from her almost-casually slouched position, sitting erect, giving me her full attention.

Her sudden move surprised me. I thought she would be snarky, but her attitude was that of respectful attention.

It was like she were treating me seriously.

Nobody had ever listened to me before. Nobody had ever taken me seriously before.

Rosalie was doing that right now.

I swallowed and took a deep breath and began again.

"Rosalie," I said quietly, "uh, ... would you ... go out with ... me?"

Rosalie regarded me coolly, and I waited for her answer, my stomach in knots, and I knew what it was to feel like a boy, asking a girl out.

It felt like I was so scared that I wanted to puke.

* * *

**A/N:** Of course, the title of this chapter is based off that famous Portal 2 song: "If I were a core..." youtube-dot-com-slash-watch?v=4U_RvUYINpo ... no, wait, that's based off another song, right? That song being "If I were a bro ..." youtube-dot-com-slash-watch?v=WaS6mlUS5Kw


	76. but I'm not a boy

**Chapter Summary:** So what do you do when Rosalie Hale tells you 'no' when you ask her out? Get on with your life, right? No surprises there, so who cares? But what do you when you tell Rosalie Hale 'no' when she asks you out? Heh. Who could be that stupid, right? Yeah, who? Yeah.

* * *

Rosalie regarded me intently, like I was some new strain of virus she'd just discovered in the lab, and didn't know quite what to do with me.

But then what she said surprised me.

"When?" she asked.

I just couldn't believe it. She didn't brush me off, nor scold me, nor ...

She was asking me ... _'when'?_ Like ... she was actually considering it?

"Uh," I said, surprised at the contingency I didn't actually expect to happen, "well, tonight, maybe?" I asked cautiously, then added hastily, "that is, if you wanted to, or weren't busy with something else, or you ..."

"Stop," she cut in sharply, irritation coloring her voice.

_Shoot!_ I instantly realized I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have given her that out. That was me chickening out, and I saw in her face she was disappointed with me for doing that.

She sighed heavily, and then put her face into her hand, resting it there for a moment as she covered her eyes.

"Uh, ..." I said, not knowing how to recover from my flub.

And I had seen it so clearly before. Me, being brave, asking her out, and her answering, and me taking it well, whether her answer was 'yes' or 'no,' because that didn't matter. What mattered was that I had asked. That I had dared to do what nobody else would dare.

Not in Ekalaka, anyway. Ask Rosalie Hale out? That was too high a reach for most people Back East, never mind here!

But I didn't plan for it to fall apart like this, at least not at the very beginning.

I guess I didn't plan for my chicken nature. I guess I should've factored that in. And not asked in the first place at all.

Joy.

Rosalie dropped her hand back into her lap and straightened up purposefully. Then she took me in, looking me up and down. And I saw what she saw, a little lanky kid in a sweaty sweater with knobby knees and no poise, no composure whatsoever.

"Why would _I_ want to go out with _you_ tonight?" she demanded.

And she was right. I mean: who'd want to go out with me? I mean: really!

"Um," I said, and dropped my eyes, "I guess you're right. Never mind. Sorry to bother you."

I couldn't look at her.

There was silence for a second, then a very quiet and _very_ sarcastic, "Well, that went _swimmingly!"_

I wondered if I had the strength to flip the basin over my head. That way I could crawl under it and waste away and die out of the notice of everybody. Her words crushed me. My head fell to the side of the basin, and I shut my eyes, squeezing them tightly.

Rosalie added salt to the wound: "And then she falls apart. Great."

Surprisingly, I felt tears coming. I thought Rosalie said her mother beat the tears out of her. Had she decided not to do that to me?

"Rosalie," I whispered sadly, "you're the only person I know who can go even into my own happy place and just ..."

I swallowed sorrowfully.

"... _just crush it!"_ I finished.

"So, when you don't wallow, you indulge in escapism?" Her voice was cutting.

I sniffled. "What_ever."_ I hissed back quietly.

"Well," she said, and I heard _shaden-_whatever in her voice, just delighting in my misery, "I have to say, you did an admirable job of being a boy asking me out. Your imitation was near-perfect. Have you considered becoming an actress?"

"Ha-ha, Rose," I snapped back sullenly, "I got it, okay? But I tell you what, if I really were a boy, I wouldn't have chickened out like a little girl. No, I would've been all confident and self-assured and all ... boy-like like that."

Rosalie was quiet for a moment.

"No," she said finally. "I meant what I just said — as I _always _do, little one — boys, for the most part, behaved in nearly the same manner was what played out just now."

I opened my eyes in surprise at that, blinking away the tears.

"Did a lot of boys ask you out?" I asked.

Rosalie gave me an affronted _excuse me?_ look.

"I mean," I added quickly, "not to pry. And I didn't mean you went out with a lot of boys like that. I mean, I wasn't implying you're _that_ kinda girl who went out with a lot of boys, ... you know?"

Rosalie's face just kept getting more and more offended. She glared at me as she drummed her fingers on her knee.

I caught the clue that now was a good time to shut up. So I did.

Rosalie pursed her lips.

"No," she said quietly, then added spitefully, "I wasn't asked out by _'a lot of boys.'_ In fact, I hardly ever got asked out, and when I did, what transpired was as it did here. The boy stuttered out some incomprehensible query, and at my first question, slunk away with his tail between his legs, squeaking out some mousy apology for inconveniencing me."

She looked down at me. "Like I said, you played your rôle to a 'T'."

I rolled my eyes. "Gee, thanks!"

The quaver in my voice mocked my attempt at false indifference.

Rosalie continued, her voice faraway, as if she were back in her home town in New York, back when she was in school: "That's probably why I was so swept off my feet by Royce. 'There's a man,' I thought to myself, 'who knows what he's about and knows who he is!' So rare to find: a confident man."

She became even more thoughtful, then said: "I just didn't realize at the time that _I_ didn't know who and what he was." She looked away for a second, and muttered a venomous "... the bastard!"

Rosalie turned back again and regarded me coolly. "Still want to be a dashing young boy?" she asked with a very thinly-veiled attempt at hiding her icy scorn.

I sighed. "I never did in the first place, Rose," I said sadly, "I just wanted ..."

I looked into her critical face.

"Never mind." I murmured, dropping my eyes.

Rosalie frowned. "I just love how you so consistently kill your hopes aborning."

I wanted to snap back with a sarcastic retort. Something like, _'oh, that's one of my best qualities; thanks for noticing!'_ You know? Turning away her attack on my weakness as if I didn't care.

But I did care. I hated myself for never being able to do anything, or being able to be truly brave and go for I wanted and ... _succeed, _succeed instead of just failing and failing and failing all the time.

I hated that in me, and here it was again, making me fail.

And there Rosalie was, pointing it out to me in her cold, cruel, merciless way.

"So," she asked quietly, "are you going to tell me what you wanted?"

I shook my head sadly. "It wasn't anything special at all, Rose," I said.

Rosalie chuckled. "Come now!" she chided. "You screwed up your courage to ask out _the_ Rosalie Hale, and this effort was because it was to be 'nothing special'? I don't believe that. Tell me what you wanted, ... please?"

I sighed.

It was the 'please' she said, and how she said it, that killed me. It was if she were genuinely interested. And it sounded like she were almost desperate to know what I was thinking.

It was like she were begging. And I knew she never did that for anybody, so why would she do that for me?

"It was just ..." and my fingers fluttered in a mockery of me attempting to do a hand-wave of dismissal, "... I just saw us walking down Main street and going to the coffee shop and getting a root beer float to share. That's all. Just a little ... you know?" I gulped. "A little time out, you getting away from your family and me just asking you — you know? — where you came from and — I don't know — just how you were doing, and no worries, just some time out, then I'd bring you home, I guess, and I'd go home, and that'd be it. See?"

I was the one pleading now. "See, Rose? It wasn't anything, just ..."

I paused and breathed in. "Just some time away from it all. No high drama, just ..."

I didn't know the 'just' anymore.

"A pleasant outing?" Rosalie supplied.

"Yeah, that!" I said, opening my eyes, glad of her understanding.

Rosalie pursed her lips. Her expression became thoughtful.

"Then, ..." she paused, and said so quietly I barely heard her words, "why didn't you just say that?"

I felt the heat of anger suffuse my face. "Well," I blurted out, "because you got all ..."

Rosalie held up her hand impatiently. "No, stop, baby," she commanded, "this all could've come out just like you said it, but it didn't. You chose not to, and it wasn't because of something I said, it was something that _you_ said to yourself. What did you say to yourself that stopped you from getting to this point?"

I sighed and closed my eyes again. "I don't know, Rose, but I suppose you're gonna tell me?"

I was hurting and so, _so bone-tired._

"Baby," Rosalie said quietly, "look at me."

I forced my eyes open again. Rosalie looked blurry.

"You _do_ know what you said to yourself," she said, "because I saw you say it to yourself. I asked why I would go out with you, and then you had this whole conversation with yourself where you did not include me at all, and then you shut down completely, and you left me sitting here, dumbstruck and wondering what the hell just happened in the thirty seconds that someone comes out of nowhere, asks me out, doesn't say why, and then disappears into a puddle of their own shame!"

"Why do people do that?" she demanded. "They get into their heads, shut everybody else out and then shut right down?"

"That's one way of looking at it," I groused.

She regarded me coolly, "And the other way of looking at it is?"

"Well, you..." I began.

"Ah, ah, ah!" Rosalie scolded.

_"Lemme finish!" _I shouted.

Rosalie frowned.

I glared at her.

I've found, dealing with Her Highness, that you always have to gauge these things. Her frown could be terrifying, but it wasn't her screaming at me, so I took it as her 'okay, you can finish, but this had _better be good, or else!'_

So I finished. "Look, you were all like, 'who are you to ask me out?' and, well ..."

I shrugged. "You were right. I mean, what can I say? 'I'm all that!' No, I can't, because I'm not, and even if I were, who am I to say something like that? And so, when you put it that way, there was nothing for me to say."

"See?" I asked, looking at her imploringly for understanding.

What I got was her surprise, or her disappointment.

"I didn't say that at all," she said, hurt in her voice.

"Yes, Rose," I said, "you did."

She shook her head. "No," she said angrily, "I _didn't!"_

_"Yes, you did!" _I shouted.

Great. A shouting match.

_So mature! _Neither of us qualified being grown-ups, it looked like.

Rosalie glared at me, and I was pretty darn sure I was glaring right back.

Then the tension broke in her. She rolled her eyes angrily and blew out a long sigh and said, softly, "Baby, what I said was, 'why would I go out with you tonight?' and ..."

_"Exactly!" _Ooh. Um ... I said that a little more forcefully than I intended, so I blew out a long breath of my own and ignored the pain coursing through my whole body.

The way she beat me, so hard, ... it was agonizing in my butt, and that pain just radiated through all of me. It made it hard to think, and when I did think, it was so easy just to become irritated and angry.

I said quietly. "That's what you were saying, see? You were saying what gives somebody like me the right to ask you out, or even go near you? See?"

Rosalie's mouth fell open.

Then she closed her eyes for a second and shook her head, her hands making twisting motions in the air around each other.

"The way you turn my words around ..." she said ruefully.

My tummy growled.

_Shoot!_ I was hungry, too, and being reminded of it now, I realized I was _famished!_

_AND_ I had to deal with Miss I'm-right-and-you're-wrong, too.

When can a girl get a break around here, ever? I mean ... _really!_

Rosalie looked down at my grumbly tummy, making me very aware of my bare ... well, _knees_, ... but pressed forward, anyway.

"So you're saying it's my fault that you withdrew your invitation?" she demanded.

"Well, yeah, ..." I said.

The way she put it, it made it sound like it was _my_ _fault_ that _she_ made me feel like dirt, ...

... because, well, I was.

Rosalie's eyes narrowed.

"How much are you willing to bet on that?"

I could hear her counting the coin she'd be making off me.

"Uh, bet on what?" I stalled, blanching.

Putting the word 'bet' next to 'Rosalie' seemed to lead to terrifying results, even when I had a sure-win, or so I thought, until I found out otherwise.

She smirked. "You say that I stopped you from getting to an answer to your solicitation. I bet that's not the case at all. I bet, if our rôles were reversed, and I were the boy and you the girl, that I could get to an answer, given the scenario plays out the same way. Take me up on it?"

"H-how much?" I asked before I could stop myself.

Rosalie's smile became predatory. "Oh, I was thinking a small sum, like one hundred dollars, just to keep it interesting..."

She worked really hard to keep a poker face. She kept trying hard to press her lips together to hide her grin.

She kept failing on hiding her anticipation.

"I-..." I said. "I don't have a hundred dollars on me."

That was a true statement. In fact, in my _entire life_ I had never even _seen nor heard_ anybody mention one hundred dollars as a sum put for any use.

One hundred dollars? You could live a year off that. _A whole year_ with room and board and anything you wanted to do with yourself the rest of the day, like, I don't know ... if you were feeling wild, you could play pool at the bar every night of the week!

But only if you had that wild hair grown in you.

"Think of it, then," Rosalie cooed enticingly, "if what you say is true, and you believe it, then you just say 'yes' to this bet and you walk away with an easy one hundred dollars, free and clear."

"I..." I dithered.

"Yes?" her voice wasn't laced with masked enthusiasm, ... it was _dripping _with it.

That decided me. "No bet," I said, relief flooded my voice.

Actually I felt all the pent-up tension that I didn't know had been building up in me during this conversation just explode out of my body in a wave, leaving me weak — okay: _weaker! _— and drained.

Rosalie looked sorely disappointed. _"Chicken!" _she taunted.

I blew out a long sigh. I think I had just saved my own life. One hundred dollars? How in the world could I possibly repay that kind of money? And, given that I wasn't earning a dime a day, like some of the poor souls out there, what would've been the in-kind payment that Rosalie would've demanded if ... I mean _when ..._ I lost?

I shuddered to think what that could have been, looking at her hungry eyes looking at me.

Rosalie made a few sarcastic chucking sounds with her tongue, imitating a chicken, trying to get a rise out of me. But I knew how that went, so I refused her bait, just settling for a glare and a whispered, _'still no bet!'_ which I hope sounded resolved and brave.

I think it sounded pretty good, actually, not at all chicken-like.

Not too much.

Rosalie glared and snorted a disappointed, _'Hmmphf!'_

I smiled, just a little bit, and wondered if it was daring to think she looked _cute_ when she didn't get her way like that.

I mean, _her_ _way, _not like _'having her way with me'_ because that was so totally ...

Wait a minute ...

_Oh, my God!_ If I lost, would she take out like-kind by having her way with me _one hundred times?_

I feel sick now, and tried to think of something else, ... _anything else!_

"Okay," her voice was conciliatory, but she still looked miffed, "no bet. But let's play this scenario out again, anyway, our rôles reversed this time."

"Why?" I asked, mystified.

"Just humor me," she _tsk_ed.

"Why?" I asked again.

Rosalie glared again. "I'm sorry..." she said, not sounding sorry at all. "I didn't know I was talking to a 'why-parrot' now, ... or did you just regress to a three-year-old?"

"Funny," I bit back, sarcastically, "I'm just saying that why do you want to do this all over again, with _you,_ of all people, asking _me _out?"

And I thought, _yeah, me, ... of all people._

Rosalie pursed her lips. "You said I stopped you. If that be the case, then you could stop me, given the same scenario."

"But, Rosalie," I said reasonably, "you're you, and I'm me. That's _totally different!"_

"Yes," Rosalie said, smiling cryptically.

I sighed in annoyance.

"Humor me?" Rosalie asked plaintively.

I was catching on. This was another one of her 'lessons' that she so wanted to impart on me.

So, ... hm. Fight her or humor her?

"Okay," I capitulated, and thought angrily _let's just get this over with._

Rosalie smiled. "How did you start again? Ah, yes."

She closed her eyes for a second and seemed to shrink into herself.

Eyes still closed. "Okay, you be me, and I'll be you, okay?"

It was like she was conspiring with me, ... like we were getting into all sorts of deliciously fun trouble, and she couldn't wait to get caught red-handed so she could 'fess up to what a bad girl she'd been, and I was the co-conspirator, helplessly dragged along, wondering if this was supposed to be fun and wondering for how many months my parents would ground _me_ for her having all the fun and her getting off scott free and laughing with all her friends the very next day at poor little me consigned to my room for _months and months!_

_Grrrr! I HATE that!_

She opened her eyes, smiling easily. "Sit up, sweetie," she whispered, _soto voce._

Okay, first difference: there was _no way_ I was smiling openly, easily, invitingly to her like she was doing to me.

I let that difference slide as I struggled up to a seated position, wincing at the sharp sting my butt received as I shifted my weight and my cheeks made contact with the thankfully cool basin bottom.

Rosalie waited patiently, then, when I looked up to her, she brushed her hair back, and started.

"Hi!" she greeted me warmly, "You're Rosalie Hale, right? You just moved in with your family this past week? Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me? I could show you around town, and it's always good to get to know a town and its people from somebody who knows the place, right?"

Okay, I _know_ I didn't say that, _at all._ Because the way she said it? It made perfect sense.

I realized I was just staring at her, open-mouthed.

I mean, she had this _presence_ that just made you want to nod your head and do whatever she said.

"Ask 'when?'" she whispered out of the side of her mouth.

"Oh," I said, coming out of the shock of her steamrolling introduction. "Um, when?" I asked shyly.

"Well," she said easily, "I was thinking maybe tonight, if you have an availability. No time like the present, right?"

I was wondering why she wanted to wait until tonight, when I was like, if she said, _'why wait?' _then my thought was, okay, I have an availability _right now, _never mind tonight!

I wondered how she _made_ me feel this way, because, obviously, when I asked her that, I saw _no_ such feeling on her part toward me.

She waited, not the least bit ruffled or ill at ease.

"Well, okay," I said, "sur-..."

"You're supposed to say 'why would I go out with you tonight,' remember Lizzie?" she asked very quietly and quickly.

Her expression didn't alter one bit. I'm not even sure I saw her lips move.

"Oh," I said, flustered, and blushing at embarrassment. I didn't know you got graded on these things.

Rosalie smirked at my confusion, which only made me blush harder.

"Um," I said, hesitating, trying to remember what I was supposed to say, even though she just told me my line.

I got _terrible_ stage fright. People looking at me expectantly? Puke city, and that's a fact.

"Uh," I stuttered then said those mean, mean words she said to me: "Well, why would _I_ want to go out with _you?" _and I felt my face tighten and my chest tighten and my lips purse as I felt the anger coursing through me as I remembered how hurtful those words were when she said them to me.

"Well," she said, brushing her hair back, ... and I saw it was like she was brushing my words, my anger, my attitude aside, just like she brushed her hair out of her eyes: so easily and naturally, "you seem like a really nice person, Rose, and ..."

_"Rosalie," _I hissed, and smiled triumphantly, so pleased at how I fell into my rôle of being a Miss Meanie, just like her.

That gave her a second's pause, which gave me a wickedly warm feeling in my tummy. _Push me around, huh? _I thought vindictively, _See how __you__ like that, Miss Bossy!_

She blinked in surprise at that, but recovered so quickly that it didn't look that my words even phased her at all!

"Um, okay, _Ros_alie." She recovered with such ease and grace, it left me dumbfounded and befuddled. "So I thought maybe we could go by the coffee shop and have a root beer float, if you wanted, you know? Get out of the house and see our town, small that it is, and what we have to offer. I know you've come from the big city, so you may be offput by our ways, so I thought a friendly hello and outing would be a nice introduction to us so you can see we're hospitable people."

I blinked in shock.

She just took everything I threw at her, and just ... just ...

Just put it to one side. It didn't even _bother_ her. I tried so hard to knock her off-balance, but it seems like I just _couldn't!_

She just was so _easy _to get along with, so friendly.

She looked at me, smiling, and said: "So, what do you say? May I come around your house this evening after supper tonight and say hello to your folks before we go out?"

I didn't know what to say.

I suppose I could've said 'no,' and 'go to hell!' or something like that.

But you say that to her? Her eagerness? Her openness? Her friendliness? Her perseverance?

Putting kittens into a meat grinder would've been a much nicer alternative. _No_body could slight her, asking like that. Nobody with a shred of decency, that is.

I could say, "Well, I don't know, I'll think about it," I suppose. Which was the nice, polite way of saying 'no, thank you.'

But who could be that stupid, really? Here's this person from town, asking me out ... _nicely, _offering a walk to the soda shop and back, and if I said 'no, thank you' like that — that is: politely — then when would she ask again? Like ever? Like ... _never? _No, she'd go to some girl who'd be friendly back to her friendliness, not distant and off-putting, like I was to everybody who ever talked to me.

But I could say what I'd say.

"I'm shy."

It was a whisper.

I wasn't looking at her anymore. I couldn't. She wasn't a boy. No, she didn't even _act_ like a boy. In fact, she was acting more girlish now than I had ever seen her act ...

No, wait. That's not true ... for she was acting girlish when ...

My stomach twisted up into a knot.

She was acting sweet and demure and girlish when she was ... 'with' ... Edward.

And that hurt: she acted sweet when she was with a boy she wanted to be with, but when she was with me, she was just haughty and mean and harsh. And bossy. And angry and impatient.

It was like I wasn't worth her time or her effort to be nice to me, but other people for her, _boys, _were. And that hurt. A lot.

But her, acting girlish?

She didn't lose one ounce of her confidence, her self-possessed air, her pride, her _self_. She had _all_ those things and on top of that, she had a sweetness and friendliness to her that ...

_God!_ If she were that way with Edward, and with ... with that _bastard ROYCE!_

If she were like that with them? And they rejected her, and hurt her?

God!

And she said other boys didn't ask her out? And crawled away? Because she was like this?

God, men are stupid! Men are so, so stupid to miss on just _knowing_ this person, this ...

I don't know what to call her. I can't find the words to describe what she's like, how she makes me feel in my tummy, in my brain as she purées it into a mess of confusion, on my ... well, my butt _really hurts! _but my arms and legs are jelly and my heart ... my heart is doing flip-flops.

And men ... boys ... anybody ... just pass on this because they're too proud or too scared just to say 'hello' to her and say 'hey, you wanna go to the soda shop and have a root beer float?'

They can't do just that?

Wait.

I can't do just that?

My face suffused with heat as I felt shame. I felt so ashamed and little and worthless.

I screwed up my courage to ask Rosalie Hale out, and then I screwed that up!

And then when she asked me, I couldn't even say 'yes,' like I wanted to, like I knew she wanted me to. All I could say was, 'I'm shy.'

God, I'm such a wimp!

"Baby?"

Rosalie's voice was small... it was almost ... scared.

It was like she was scared for me: that I would wither up and die if she weren't gentle right now.

I think she's right.

"Don't ..." I whimpered, "don't look at me now, _please!"_

Oooooh! Darn it! I can't believe it!

Guess who's crying now? Bet you a hundred bucks that you know the answer!

There was a sighing of air: "Wow!"

And I heard the amazement in her voice.

I guess she was finally getting what a piece of work she had ... in me.

That smote me, her realization, and I broke down, right there on the lip of the basin, and I was bawling like the little three-year-old girl she had just accused me of being, and realizing that, too, made it hurt even worse.

I had just descended from a girl being asked out on a date _by Rosalie Hale! _to a bawling three-year-old baby girl, and worse: right in front of _her,_ too.

She scooped me up. She picked me up, effortlessly, with her arms circling my back and under my knees and she brought me to the bed on which she sat.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow!" I mewed as my sore and sensitive butt hit the denim of her jeans.

She realized this and put my head into her shoulder and boosted me up and put her hand under me. It still hurt, terribly so, but the cold and smoothness of her hand was infinitely preferable to the fabric of her jeans. It was almost a balm and the pain receded to where I got to think about other things.

Like what a terrible, terrible failure I am, that I flub an ask-out on a date, _twice in a row!_

"Oh, baby!" she cooed consolingly. "Oh, baby, you are so, so _fragile!"_

That actually didn't help at all. I was now screaming, wailing into her shoulder, and I pulled myself into her with all my might, my fingers trying to dig into her back and shoulder blades and my teeth biting down into her shirt.

I was that low. I was so low that I grabbed at her, my only purchase, with everything I could: my hands, my fingers, even my teeth.

I felt if I let go, or if she let me go, I'd fall into the abyss, and I'd never, _ever_ find my way up nor out again. And I held onto, and held _into _her, with all my might, so much so that if she were another person my teeth would've cut into her flesh and drew blood, and my fingers would've clawed into her back and shoulder blades, causing her harm.

She wasn't another person. She wasn't _a_ _person, _at all. She was a god.

And I was a mere, little mortal, crying into her shoulder, holding onto her for dear life, and in holding, breathing _her_ into me, and the rose, the honeysuckle was such a powerful balm that it calmed me and held me together, even as I fell apart.

"My poor, poor baby!" she sang gently and sweetly. "It's okay, little one. I've got you. I've got you."

I cried. I cried and I cried and I cried.


	77. Lying

**Chapter Summary: **It's ironic, isn't it? That she called me her hope, when what I see in her is that she is the one whose inner purity shines forth, untouched, even by the blackness of my soul. It's ironic, isn't it, that she's unable to move, unable to care for herself, but still she reaches out to me, to make sure I'm 'okay.' Did God make her selfless to allow me to be selfish? This sophistry is getting me nowhere but closer to damning her. Her goodness only makes me hate the evil that is me all the more.

* * *

"What do I do with you?" she asked, looking down into my eyes.

I shifted them away.

She stroked my hair softly.

"Feed you first?" she continued unabated. "Or bathe you? You need both rather desperately."

I concentrated on breathing.

I had no strength in me. No strength to move, or to think, or barely even to breathe, so I concentrated on just that, because that was all I could manage for now.

"What do you say, Lizzie?" she asked.

After a while, she said quietly, "Are you still in there?"

I shifted my eyes back to hers.

She smiled hopefully, cautiously at me. When I didn't respond, the smile went away.

She brought her face right up to mine. She rested her forehead against mine and looked deeply into my eyes for a long time.

It was if she were looking into me to find if there were anything left worth salvaging.

It looked like she found something, but I don't know what, for she broke her stare, abruptly pulling away from me.

"Feed you first," she said, businesslike, and lifted me up, going to the sink, getting my mug, filling it with broth from the chicken soup in the pot on the stove. Then she sat us down at the table, and she ... fed me.

She put the mug to my lips and she let the liquid rest at the lip of the mug, allowing me to sip at my speed.

I was grateful for it, her care, and, at the same time, I saw what I was, what I had now become: the very thing I had told her I so desperately wanted not to be, a burden.

I sipped the soup, and swallowed gall and bitterness.

And, at the same time, I saw _her._ And I saw that she wasn't burdened by me, she just cared for me, and she set everything about herself aside, her cares, if she had any, her concerns, and what she had to do for herself. I didn't know any of these things. I didn't know her at all, really, just that she had to hunt occasionally, and right now, in fact, her black, black eyes and her pale face and the dark circles under her eyes showing this. But that's all I knew about her needs: _nothing at all. _And she knew _everything_ about me.

But she radiated an unperturbed calm. She was caring for me, and it occupied everything in her to do this, but it didn't bother her like it _bothered_ me, this burden.

It was like she said: the burden of me was my gift to her, because she got to do something about it, when I couldn't.

I finished at about half the mug. I couldn't take any more of the broth into me.

She looked down at the mug and at me, and she looked disappointed.

"More?" she asked.

I shook my head.

She pursed her lips. "We have to do something about this," she grumbled, but she wasn't speaking to me; she was speaking to herself.

Then she did address me directly. "You are starving yourself. Try to eat some more soup later, okay?"

I nodded mechanically. I was too weak physically and mentally to do anything other than what she told me to do. If she said, _'Here, Lizzie, walk off this cliff into the river.' _I'd be like, _uh, okay,_ and I'd just do it. Consequences, thought, all these things seemed too hard for me to manage right now.

Rosalie frowned and set the mug on the table, then lifted me easily, and moving to the basin, placed me gently in it.

I grimaced as my bottom hit the tub.

She stripped me, after her own fashion. She just ripped my sweater and tee shirt in one motion, right in half, and right off my body, throwing them both in a wad by the stove.

They made a sweaty-wet _thud_ as they hit the floor, and I got the image of her as a butcher, and those, my remaining clothes being my entrails that she had just carved out of my carcass.

I blinked the image away as she receded, filling a pitcher with water from the stove.

"It's warm now," she announced, pleased.

I shook my head.

She stopped. "What is it, baby?"

"Pee," I whispered.

"Oh," she said, "you have to go?"

She put the pitcher down on the floor and came to get me.

"No," I whispered.

She looked at me quizzically.

"You have..." I said, making the effort, "You have my pee on your pants."

And I wrinkled my nose at my stinkiness marring her perfect scent.

She her head snapped downward, and she saw the drying stain over her front.

"Well, well," she exclaimed, smirking. "I do, indeed!"

My eyes shifted away, embarrassed at what I had done.

"I suppose I should bathe, too, then," I heard her say, and I heard more tearing.

I looked back, and she had removed her clothes, her hand going down her body, her fingers, her _claws,_ turning cotton and denim to shreds, just like that.

She took the tattered remnants and threw them beside the wet mess that used to be my sweater and tee then picked up the pitcher, coming to me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.

I shook my head slightly in wonder.

"You have no shame!" I sighed sadly, no longer shocked that she didn't have the slightest bit of modesty or hesitancy about herself.

That gave her pause. She looked at me critically.

Oh, ... I suppose I may've just insulted her.

"I mean," I said softly, "you're very comfortable with your body."

"I am," she said. "And you're right, Lizzie, I have no shame about my body. I know what I am, and am not ashamed about it..."

She looked at me consideringly, and I blushed under her scrutiny.

"Why are you so uncomfortable and ashamed of _your_ body?" she asked quietly.

I looked away.

"You have nothing to be ashamed of, you know," she said.

A small laugh escaped my chest, even though I tried to crush it.

"You're right, Rose," I said sadly, "I shouldn't be ashamed because I do have nothing ..."

... _nothing compared to you ... nothing compared to anybody._

I heard a long sigh, and the the pitcher being placed back on the floor, firmly.

"Okay," Rosalie's voice was firm. "I've had just about enough of that kind of talk."

I heard some dragging on the floor, and I looked over toward the sound.

Rosalie was unfolding the triptych, and the mirror cast reflected light across my body as it came into full view.

_Oh, brother, _I thought with annoyance.

Rosalie came and picked me up from the tub and carried me over to the mirror, unfolding me from her arms and letting my feet touch the floor, but still holding me tightly in her embrace, a bear hug from behind, one arm over my chest under my arms, the other wrapped around my stomach.

We both knew if she let go I would crumple into a heap onto the floor.

"Lizzie," she said quietly, "look into the glass."

My head was turned away from the mirror, and turned away from her.

"I don't want to," I said in a small voice.

Rosalie was quiet for a moment, then, commandingly, she said: "I didn't ask what you want, and I don't particularly care at the moment either. Now. Please. Look at yourself."

I bit my lips.

And I looked.

She was looking at me, at my reflection, harshly.

"Lizzie," she said.

There we were, two girls, but one, _her, _in total control, holding me in her arms.

"Tell me," she said, "are you mine?"

I drew in a ragged breath. "Yes, Rose," I sighed, "I am yours."

"Then your body is mine?" she asked.

I looked at us in the glass, her chin on my shoulder, her arms about me, modestly covering my breasts, but not so modestly not covering down ... lower.

I could see me, _everything ..._ and see the nothing that I was, and still be ashamed of it. Of me.

"Yes," I said sadly. I was _hers._

Her eyes narrowed. "To do with whatever I so desire, right?" she continued relentlessly. "You are mine, Lizzie; your body is mine, right?"

I felt my chest rise and fall and her arms rise and fall with it as I breathed.

"Yes," I said. She could crush the air right out of me, and right now, if she wanted to.

"Then," she said, "when you insult your body, and belittle it, you are insulting and belittling what is _mine, _do you understand me?"

Her eyes became intense as she glared at me.

"Oh," I said.

I hadn't quite seen it that way.

_"'Oh,' _she says," she replied sarcastically.

I kept looking into her eyes in the glass, glaring at me. I didn't dare to look away.

"Just so you know," she informed me. "I take grave offense to insults levied at what is mine. And I become _particularly_ angry at the insulter. Lizzie," she said, "you know this quite well already: you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

"Now," she added, "I think we both know what you meant by your body being 'nothing,' don't we, Lizzie?" she demanded.

She waited.

"I..." I said.

"So, let's address that, _again,"_ she spat angrily.

Her hands shifted, and I gasped in shock.

Her arm on my tummy had shifted upward, and her hand around my chest had moved, too. Her hands were crossed and now cupping my breasts, showing them to me in the glass.

My face burned with shame as I saw myself, my breasts, even my _nipples,_ fully exposed, completely displayed in my nakedness.

"Lizzie," Rosalie said evenly, the false calm in her voice covering over the power and possessiveness and anger I felt rumbling in her being, "who's tits are these?"

My face was beat red, and I couldn't look at myself, but I couldn't look away.

"O-oh," I whispered.

I was sucking in air in smaller sips than the soup broth from moments ago.

"You say 'oh' quite a bit, don't you, Lizzie," Rosalie said coolly. Then she continued. "Your body, these tits, they are _mine! Got it?"_

She snarled those last word fiercely.

My breath stopped in my throat.

"So," her voice calm again. "When you think insultingly of these tits, _my tits,"_ her hands gave a very slight, gentle squeeze, "then you are actually insulting _my tits, because that's what they are! MINE! You got that?" _she demanded harshly, her voice dropping its earlier, false, calm.

She waited again.

Then her glare got angrier.

"Yes," I said quickly.

"I don't think that you do," she countered. "So I'll put it this way..."

But then she didn't. She kept looking and looking at me in the glass...

Then she turned her head away, and put all my weight into her right arm, supporting my whole weight, what it was, easily, and she took her left hand and rubbed her chin thoughtfully for a moment.

"I already told you, Lizzie," she said so softly, her head turned away, her eyes closed, "that you are beautiful, and it's a _crime_ for you to denigrate yourself so ... _callously._ I don't know if you can hear me when I say that. So I will say it this way: I would rather," she said, "that when you even _start to think_ these thoughts of self-immolation that you walk right up to me and slap me across the face and insult _my _breasts. Do you understand me? I _hate it,"_ she spat forcefully, "you hurting yourself in this way, so when you go to do that, just know this: you are intentionally hurting me."

She turned back and faced me in the mirror again. "You are _mine,_ Lizzie," she snarled, then her voice became pleading: "so when you hurt yourself, you hurt me. Please stop hurting yourself in this way. It is so tiring for me to deal with."

Her glare became hard and burned. "Look at yourself," she commanded.

I looked, burning, hurting, ashamed.

"See yourself, Lizzie," she ordered, "and know you are beautiful and perfect. If I did not find you so, I would not say it."

I looked at me. I looked at her, looking, balefully, at me. I looked at me again.

I didn't see what she saw in me. What I saw was ...

I saw a god holding a girl. I saw absolute, incredibly powerful and immoveable certainty in one face, and I saw ...

... plainness, ordinariness, shame, ... in the other.

"You are beautiful, Lizzie," she said. "Say it."

I closed my eyes, and hung my head, and drew in a long, ragged breath.

Her hands shifted again, re-encircling me in her arms, and I felt my heart, fit to burst, trying to beat its way out of my chest as she held me.

Eventually she sighed.

"Well," regret tinging her voice, and then ... resolve. "Not now, but one day."

"I wish I could see me as you say you see me," I whispered, my head still bowed, into my chest, into my soul.

She whispered back into my ear, speaking directly into my soul, just like I did. "I don't need to wish that you'll see yourself as I do, because one day," she said with such certainty it was terrifying, "you will see yourself as you actually are."

"I don't see that, Rosalie," I whispered. "I can't!"

"Shhhh," Rosalie hummed, "sh-sh-sh."

I sighed a long, ragged, helpless sigh.

She picked me up and brought me to the tub.

She bathed me.

There was no room for both of us in the tub, so she held me upright, in one arm, as she poured water over me, and sometimes she flitted into the tub, her body next to mine, pressed against it, as there was no room, really for both of us to be apart, even standing, and she poured water over us both then. She circled so effortlessly around me, it was if she were a tiger, circling her kill, looking for the perfect place to strike, or ... no ...

It was like she were a dancer, knowing how to lead her partner, so that I had to do nothing, and she did everything, so easily, but I was the center, and focus, of attention, and she were the one, attending to me, admiring me, ... bathing me.

She asked me to help. She handed me the washcloth, well-soaped, and stepped into the tub with me, molding herself into me, and all I had to do was move my arm up and down her back, her perfect back.

And I did. Or, I tried to. There was no strength in my arm, so it made sad little jerking motions. And while I tried, she put her forehead to mine again, looking into my eyes, measuring me.

And I could she was ill-pleased with my frailty, my weakness. I saw disappointment in her impassive eyes.

But she said nothing, and her face didn't change expression. She simply moved her hand behind her back, grasping my elbow lightly, and moved my arm for me.

I was a puppet on a string, a pinocchio, a little animated wooden girl who was supposed to be filled with her own life, and was supposed to be able to move on her own, ... who was supposed to be able to help.

But I couldn't. Rosalie said she was stone, that she was a dead thing, but she was wrong.

I was the dead thing.

And she was the one with strength to spare. She pulled the strings, and I moved, and if she let me go, I would crumple into a heap.

"Rosalie," I whispered shyly as she moved my arm to rub her back.

"Yes?" she asked carefully.

She could sense it. She could sense everything in me, and know what I was thinking and feeling, even before I could, even if I didn't know myself.

"Why did you ask me to lie to you?"

My arm moved up and down her back, guided by her gentle hand. I felt her thinking as she had me wash her.

"Did you ever want something so much," she asked eventually, "that you didn't care what price you would have to pay for it? Or what the consequences would be?"

It was my turn to be quiet now.

"No," I said.

To want something that bad, I would have to want something in the first place. I wasn't a person who wanted anything, as I could always make do with the way things were.

"But," I said, "I know you did then, didn't you?"

"Yes," she said. "When you said those words to me ..."

She was quiet.

"You know you hurt me, when you said that to me?" she asked quietly.

"Yes," I said.

"But you don't know how much you did, sweetie, because ..." She was thoughtful. "How to explain it to you? I am in Eternity. I don't forget things, but it's not because I have a perfect memory. No, I don't have memory at all anymore, I just have this Now, and everything that has happened and is happening, and when it will happen, happens, is all in this Now, all right before me, ever present. So when you said 'fuck you!' to me, so ... so ..."

Rosalie was at a loss for words.

"Well, you saying that to me?" she said finally, "It's happening in this Now. It's happening now, as I held you as you cried, it's happening now as you wash my back, it'll happen tomorrow whether you laugh or cry or shout at me or ..., and then next day, and the next and on until forever. Ever now will be you, coming up to me, so furious that your face was white with anger, and you say those words to me, now, and again, and forever more."

She was quiet again.

"I just wanted it to go away," she said finally, "and I just didn't care what price had to be paid to make that go away. If you didn't say it, if you said you didn't say it, then I could lie to myself, every time, every now, this image imposed itself on me, and say, 'See? She really didn't say it,' and at least console myself with that lie, instead of facing this harsh truth of you saying those words to me, and meaning it."

My arm had fallen to her side, for she had let go of my elbow, taken the washcloth from my hand and was now gently rubbing my back with the washcloth.

I rested in her shoulder. "Rose," I said very quietly, "I am so, so _sorry!"_

I felt her smile at my apology. "And even as you say this with all your heart, I still see you coming up to me, furious, angry, hurt and confused, and lashing out with those words, right to my face, with all the strength you could muster, and saying those words to me, and meaning it."

I swallowed. I didn't know how to make this better.

She pulled back from me, holding me by my shoulders.

"You hurt me," she said.

"Yes," I said despondently.

"Now and forever," she said, looking right into my eyes.

I breathed in a huge gasp of air.

"Rose, please," I said helplessly, "yes, I'm sor-..."

"But do you know who it was you hurt more?" she demanded.

_Uh, oh!_ My throat was bouncing up and down, trying to swallow as I tried to breathe.

But I knew what was coming now.

"When I saw you come right at me, your tiny hands coiled in fists, so passionate, so determined, I was like ..."

Rosalie shook her head.

"But then, baby, you surprised me, and shook me to the core when you said those words, but you? when you said them?"

She looked hurt as she looked at me.

"Baby, this was you."

Her face changed.

She became angry and furious, and then she said the words.

"Fuck you, Rosalie Hale. _Fuck... YOU."_

And as she said them her expression was blank with her determination.

And I flinched, looking at her saying that as me, and hearing those words I promised never to say again, hearing her say them as me almost felt like I was breaking my promise.

But then her face ... a realization crept over her features, like she just heard herself say those words.

And her face fell. Her jaw became slack. She looked shocked and hurt. And then she looked down and away, petulant and chastised.

She looked like she was caught in the act of being herself: a girl who said 'fuck you' to somebody else, and meant it.

And she kept this expression on her face, the realization, the hurt, the shame, for a moment. It was like she didn't know what to do with herself anymore. It was like she didn't know where to look anymore.

It was like she were me, exactly as I felt, in that moment after I said those words.

Then she looked back at me, herself again.

"Baby, ..." she said, "Sweetie," she added gently. "You wanted to hurt me, and you did, but in doing so, you hurt yourself so, so much more, and I realized..."

She rested her forehead on mine. "I realized _I_ did this to you. I've done exactly what I feared, I've made you into a ... monster; I turned you into ... me."

Suddenly, she wasn't looking at me anymore. She dropped the washcloth into the basin and wrapped her arms around me, and held me in an embrace so tightly I feared I would burst. My chin was resting on her shoulder and her chin was on mine, and she held me, shoulder to shoulder, my toes barely scraping the basin bottom, her arms powerfully encircling me, her breaths came and went in a slow, steady rhythm as she held me.

I tried to hold her back, but my arms were pinned to my side, encircled in hers. So all I could do was lightly touch and rub her sides. I tried to tell her it was okay, and that she didn't do it, that I did this, but I couldn't even breathe, she held me so tightly.

Just like I wanted her to. Always.

Eventually she loosened her grip, and I could breathe again, thankfully, and the grey spots receded from my eyes.

"Rosalie," I whispered when I had air back in my lungs, "you didn't turn me into anything. I ... I did that. I said that. You didn't make me do anything. I'm the one who chose to say that, and I did."

"Baby," she said quietly in my ear, "before you met me, did you even know that word existed? Did you ever think it in your thoughts to yourself, ever?"

"Well, no, but ..." I said quickly trying to counter her argument.

"I rest my case," she said with finality.

"Rosalie, I ..." I tried again.

"Shhh," she said softly, and her arms tightened about me, squeezing the air out of my lungs and silencing me. "By assuming your own responsibility in this matter is noble, and I applaud you for it," she said solemnly, "but this, this is my doing. I wrought this in you. This is my fault, and the blame is mine. That is how it is, and how it rests with me, and I don't wish to hear any more of this."

She pulled me out of her tight embrace, holding me by my shoulders, so we could look eye-to-eye. "Do we have an understanding?"

No, we didn't. We had her side, and we had mine. She took the blame for what I said, but so did I.

But, the way she was looking at me, so intensely ...

I closed my eyes and bowed my head forward.

I didn't intent it, but my forehead touched hers.

"Okay, Rosalie," I said sadly. "Okay."

"Good," she said, pleased.

I opened my eyes, "But I still think ..." I began.

"You know," she said, glowering, "I'm just so tempted to silence those lips of yours by ..."

"By spanking me, huh?" I bit back.

Like that was the answer to everything that didn't go her way?

Her eyes smoldered with anger. "Baby," she said coolly, "I spanked you for a reason. I beat the fuck out of you, because 'fuck' is not something in you, like it's in me, a part of me, but for you, that word hurts you more than I could. I'm _not_ going to resort to that for you being you, because you are not that. You can disagree with me, and I may not like it, at all, but I will not trespass on it either. I beat what is not you out of you. I have no interest in breaking you nor in unmaking you. Do you understand me?"

She glared intently into my eyes.

"Yes, I understand," I said humbly.

But I wondered, then, how she would silence my lips.

Then I became _very_ aware that I was inches away from her, if that, and she from me.

And we were both naked.

And ... her smoldering look that I took to be anger?

I decided not to wonder about how she would silence me anymore.

And she had asked me out on a date, and ... but ...

I was blushing. And I _wasn't_ supposed to be wondering. I dropped my eyes from her intense glare. I suddenly didn't have the nerve to face her.

She rinsed me, and then, she lifted me up out of the tub and then even rinsed my feet and between my toes, taking care that not even a hint of soap was left on any part of my body.

And, yes, she dried me. The towel was damp when it left my body, but it seemed to suffice to get the water off hers, too. She took care drying herself, holding me, but she needn't've, it seemed to me, because the water seemed just to fall off her. It seemed unable to touch her, or it seemed afraid to.

"Rosalie," I said.

She bit her lip. "Yes?"

"So, but ... why did you ask me to lie, a second time?"

Now she didn't look at me.

She brought me to the bed, and gently sat me on her lap.

Her face got thoughtful ... reticent.

"I just couldn't believe it," she said, by way of explanation.

She looked to me for understanding.

She couldn't believe what? That I said those words? Frankly, I couldn't believe I said them, either, now that she explained what I did to myself, and to her.

I hated myself for hurting her like that ... forever.

I looked away.

She said, "I asked you to lie, and told you the consequences, but you didn't; you refused to, even though you knew you would pay a very heavy price for your refusal. You seemed incapable of duplicity or complicity."

Oh. I guess she couldn't believe something else.

"And I thought," she said, "was this me grasping at straws? I thought I had destroyed what you were when you raced out and profaned yourself, but no, immediately afterward you showed a resolve that could not be shaken. And I wondered: was there a purity in you that I could not corrupt? Had I ruined everything, or was your being, your _self, _still somehow intact? I had to know."

I gasped in shock. "Rosalie," I exclaimed, "you tested me?"

"No," she said quickly, "it was just that I ..."

"Rosalie," I cut in, "I _suck_ at tests. What if I failed? What if I gave in? What? Were you gonna stop spanking me because I proved I _wasn't _good enough not to lie? I don't get it."

She wouldn't look at me.

I raised my hand up to her cheek. I was surprised I was capable of doing that.

"Rosal-... Rose?" I said.

She wouldn't look at me.

And I thought so, so sadly: _My Rose._ She was just so incredibly ...

She was so angry and forceful, punishing me. And now I saw she was beating herself when she was beating me. I couldn't believe it. And she was testing me, too? What if I failed? If I failed, I would've failed for us both. And she put me up to this? She put _us_ up to this?

What if I failed in that moment of her weakness?

"Baby," she said, but she was speaking to the wall. "You didn't fail. If I had beaten you to within an inch of your life, and I told you, 'this next blow will kill you, but if you lie I will stop, and you will live. Now, lie,' would you have lied even then?"

She did look down at me then, looking intently for the answer in my eyes.

I blinked under her intense scrutiny.

"Rose," I said, "I don't know. I ... can't say what I would've ..."

She smiled. "You don't have to know. You wouldn't've compromised yourself. You cannot. You say you don't know, but I do. I saw it: your purity. I saw it in you that I have not seen, _ever_, in any other being. Everybody compromises in everything, in great ways or small. That's human nature. But in this one thing, ... you stood firm, not because you're principled on the matter, but because, for you, it is your very matter, your very being."

I shook my head. "I'm not pure. I'm not. I ... said _that_ to you, and ..."

She stroked my hair gently. The gesture was admiring, almost ... tender.

"Yes," she said, "you said that. And you do have your faults." She smiled warmly, almost happily, then. "But there is to you a core that I did not alter, and ..." Her smile became wan. "And I'm relieved that you are still you, no matter what my corrupting influence may have exposed you to."

I closed my eyes for a second. Then I sighed.

"Rose," I said, opening my eyes. "All I know is, I'm shaken. I'm shaken to even that core of me that you said you didn't, um, shake or whatever, okay? And ... I was this close to ..."

I looked away, remembering the screaming in my ears, _inside_ my ears, to lie my head off. And I remember how close I came to giving into the demands from her without and from me within. How so very close!

"Don't test me, Rosalie," I said. "I will fail you. I will."

"I wasn't testing you," she huffed testily. And I had to smile at that. She continued, still angry, ignoring my smile. "I had to know. I had to know that I hadn't irrevocably corrupted you."

My smile remained. "Now you know," I said, and I touched her cheek again, lightly, and let my hand fall to my lap; it felt so heavy, like dead weight. "Please don't go finding out on me again, huh? I'm not up for it."

She smiled sadly at me, chuckling softly. "My little one," she said. "And you say _I_ am _your_ hope?"

And she rested her head on my head.

I looked into her eyes, opaque, impenetrable, and tried to understand what she meant by that.

* * *

**A/N: **An analysis of this chapter is available at twilight-dad-dot-blogspot-dot-com /2013 /05 /amazing-saving-grace-dot-html


	78. Privileges

**Chapter summary:** Well, Rosalie did say she'd ... God help me! And she want me to be _grateful_ that she ... God. I'm in hell. I'm in hell, and she does whatever she wants to me, and I have to like it, or else she'll get _really _angry at me ... and _not_ kill me. Help. Please, God, help! NSFW.

* * *

"Rose, ..." I said hesitantly.

"Hm?" she asked looking down at me.

I was resting with my head in her collar bone, and — ask me now, and I'd answer I'd stay right here like this, forever, and gladly, but ...

But ...

I smiled shyly up at her. "Are we going to ... get dressed now, or ...?"

I actually didn't know the 'or.'

Rosalie looked down at me, holding me into her, and it was almost as if she were cuddling me, I felt so ... okay: mothered.

And her hair had snuck around her shoulder and provided a little bit of modesty for me and for her, covering her exposed breast, and mine.

It tickled a little bit, actually, and that was what made me aware of my — _our_ — state of undress, because, otherwise, just looking up into her eyes of pure black pools of water ...?

I was lost in them. I was lost to myself in her gaze.

Because ... well, because ... anything. Who cares? I didn't. Because in her eyes I felt cocooned, sheltered, protected and even like it were that I was the object, the pool of water that she drank and drank from with her gaze, her reverent gaze.

Do you know what I mean?

But her hair ... it tickled. A little bit. And kept reminding me that, _hey, Lizzie, that's your boob that Rosalie's hair's brushing against. _And that was something I tried to ignore, but it was an irritation that kept intruding in on me and our moment until I had to acknowledge it and, doing so, I got really shy and embarrassed.

I mean, come on, face it: I was in her arms, warm bottom and all, as naked as the day I was born.

So that's why I asked. So, you know, she wouldn't be embarrassed holding a naked girl in her arm. Although, she didn't seem to be embarrassed nor to notice at all, herself. It didn't even register at all on her face or posture. She held me, her 'little one,' and I was held by her, and that was enough.

Or it should have been. It was enough for her: this moment and nothing else.

But for me ...

I felt the heat of my blush on my face, and I felt my ... okay, my, ... okay, _my boob, okay? my boob! _blushing, too, and ... _reacting_ to her touch.

Even if it were only her hair brushing against me.

Reality seemed to come to Rosalie, of our situation. It was like she were clueless about what any of this meant. I mean, again, _c'mon! _Two girls? Naked? _In bed?_

I mean, it seemed like, it was, like, kinda ... unusual? You know what I mean?

Kinda improper. Maybe.

You know?

Well, for Rosalie, it was like, I saw in her face, that she was, like, ...

Okay, it was like she frankly didn't care, and so she was measuring in herself whether she cared enough to _pretend_ like she cared about it, but just for my sake.

And I think ...

I bit my lip.

I think she didn't care that she was supposed to care about this. The propriety of this.

You know?

She thought all this, I could see it in her face, and then she just got annoyed at it all, what she cared about and what she was _supposed _to care about, and the pretense of it all, even if this pretense protected my ... well, you know, okay, _my innocence, okay?_

Okay. Was there like layers of embarrassment? Levels to it? And what happened when you broke the scale that measured these levels?

Rosalie flicked her head sharply in annoyance, whipping her hair around to her back, as if she were angry at her own hair for calling attention in me to myself and my nakedness.

But I wasn't the only 'recalcitrant' one in the cabin. Her hair whipped back, yes, but then it slid right back around her neck and came to rest, and right on my boob, again.

Before it was my butt, and now it was my boob. She just couldn't help but touch me, could she, that minx, and in the most embarrassing places, too.

Well, this time, at least, she was aware of what was going on. When she was grabbing my butt, it was always for some 'other reason,' like she was carrying me or hugging me, but, whether she knew or didn't know her butt-grabbing inclination, I sure noticed some grabbing going on back there, and don't tell me otherwise!

_AND_ she kept me over her knee for _way_ longer than necessary ... _with pauses _to lecture me, and where were her eyes — _huh?_ — as she delivered her lecture? That she said she wasn't going to give me? But she did anyway? _I ask you!_

So, there's that. The butt-grabbing. And now this: her hair that, okay, oh-so-_conveniently_ snakes around her neck to rest on my, okay, you know, my boob, and then when she flicks it away, it comes right back, and that's coincidence?

_'Oh, Lizzie, I didn't do that! Gravity did.'_

Yeah, right. Gravity. Right.

And never-you-mind the fact that I was pressed against her boob the whole time, too, naked, because why? Because 1) I said so, and 2) _she_ was holding _me_ into her chest, so _I_ couldn't help where my body pressed against, yummy and comfy as it was, and 3) I didn't even notice this until you pointed it out, so this isn't _my_ fault anyway, it's _your_ fault, dear reader of my journal, and 4) yes, you did point it out, so don't argue with me, and-_AND_ 5) so there.

_AND_ by the mirror, she gave me a little squeeze, and you know where, too, and don't think I didn't notice that, either.

So, that leaves me only one conclusion.

GF's a total perv.

But don't tell her that. Nor that I said that.

Not that I _mind_ the occasional butt-grab, so long as it doesn't get out of hand, but ...

Um.

Actually, butt-grabbing isn't 'out of hand,' it's totally _in hand, ... hers! _I just realized this, and ...

Okay, how the hell can I get off this tack? Because, like ...

Ugh.

But the ... okay, she said my, okay, _tits_ are hers, but she just can't come up and grab'm any old time she wants to, you know? A girl has boundaries.

You have to ask nicely first before you cop a feel there. And you can only ask when I _want_ you to ask, because otherwise your face is gonna be burning from the very strong and clear message from my hand. And if you don't get the message the first time, I so totally don't mind repeating myself, my hand across your face, until you do get the message.

I know there's got to be a rule about this somewhere. You know? Like rule number one is: "no saying the 'v' word," so maybe there's a rule number two: "No touchy! My boobs, that is. Unless ... well, never mind the unless, 'cause me saying I _want_ you to touch them? I'd probably die first of embarrassment before I could get the first half of a word out, so that ain't gonna happen."

See? Rule number two. There.

Uh...

I thought I was done with this.

Okay, I was wrong.

See, rule number two didn't exist because it didn't apply until Rose dragged me in front of the mirror and said if I was gonna insult my tits, then I may as well go up to her and slap her face and then start insulting _her_ tits. I mean her boobs. I mean her breasts.

Oh, God!

And _that, _ladies and gentlemen, is so not going to happen. _Ever._

So, now: rule number two, no meanies-thoughties to my titties, 'cause Rosalie says so.

Okay, _NOW_ I'm done with that.

Okay, _where_ were we? Again?

Oh, yes: me, naked, in her arms. Naked. Her naked that is, not just her arms.

"What did you just say?" I asked, because she did just say something, I think, and I think I kinda missed what she said because I was thinking to myself thoughts about ... oh, _never mind!_

"I said, 'We'll come to that,'" she answered.

I felt my brow crease in confusion. We'll come to what? Then I realized that I had asked her a question, about when we were getting dressed, and that was her answer.

Okay, that still didn't make sense. 'We'll come to ...' what? when it came to getting dressed?

"We'll come to that?" I asked, confused and incredulous.

"Yes," Rosalie looked and sounded distracted, and this was another annoyance to her.

And we were so ... peaceful just a moment ago, just lost in each other.

Why couldn't we stay just like that?

"Do you remember," Rosalie asked, "what I said I would do with you having said what you did?"

"Oh," I said, and I shivered, shrinking into myself.

Rosalie raised her eyebrow at me, waiting.

"You said..." I whispered, my throat suddenly dry, "that you'd spank me, then you'd wash out my mouth with soap, then you'd ground me."

Rosalie nodded. "Yes," she said.

"But ..." I said.

Her face was stone. I found it almost impossible to talk to her when she got like this.

"But," I tried again, "Rosalie, I really, _really_ learned my lesson with the spanking ..."

That is to say, I really thought I was going to actually die while she was beating me to near-senselessness.

"... so," I continued weakly, "you don't have to do the other things, really. I got the message. I won't do that again. I promised." I added hopefully.

"Yes, you promised," she said, but without force.

"So you don't have to do the other things," I said.

"You're right, Lizzie," Rosalie said, "I don't."

She became quiet. "I don't have to do what I said I would do."

_Uh, oh._ I thought darkly, knowing where this conversation was going, and not liking the turn one bit.

Rosalie always gets her way, no matter what, and her arguments are always airtight.

"Do you want me not to be a person of my word?" she asked.

"No, but ..." I said quickly.

"'But'?" I felt Rosalie's penetrating eyes sear me.

"But," I pressed forward, desperately, hopelessly, "this one time, Rosalie, this one time you can just, you know ... let it slide, you know?"

"Lizzie," Rosalie reproved me, and not so gently, "'this one time' justifies every other time, a person's word means something, or it doesn't, there's no 'this one time,' there's only 'this time,' every time."

"But don't you forgive me?" I dared.

I actually didn't know if she did. Could she possibly forgive me, especially if she had to live with what I said to her always being right in front of her?

Could I forgive her, if what she did was always right in front of me, relentlessly?

"Yes, Lizzie, I forgive you," she said.

And I believed her.

She forgave me.

"But you're still going to do this? You're still going to wash my mouth out with soap and ground me?" I asked sadly, resignation weakening me so powerfully that I could barely say the words, or see anything but her, everything else fading from my sight.

"Yes," she said, "but we'll come to all of that presently."

I looked up at her.

I didn't ask 'why?' I didn't have the strength to. Curiosity had left me, along with my will to fight this injustice.

Rosalie could have her way, and she could even have her way _with me,_ and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

"Lizzie," she said, "get up."

I looked up at her.

"I can't," I said.

Rosalie frowned at this. "Can you stand on your own?"

I wish I had a 'yes' for her.

But I didn't.

I shook my head.

Rosalie gently lifted me, and sat me next to her on the bed.

I hissed and winced with pain when my butt came to rest on the blanket.

Rosalie ignored this.

"Lizzie," she said, "what does 'being grounded' mean to you?"

I looked down at my lap, and put my hands there, to give me a tiny bit of modesty.

"Nothing, I suppose," I said dully.

"Have you ever been grounded?" she pursued.

I shook my head. "But, I suppose," I said, "if Pa wanted to ground me, he'd send me to my room, but ..." I shrugged. "Why would I care? I don't like going out, anyway, unless it's with him, and where did we go? To the bar so he could hang out with the guys or to a baseball game. Boring! So I'd always take the book I was reading with me then, so if he sent me to my room, I'd just read, and in peace at that, so ..."

I didn't know what else to say.

"So, ..." Rosalie said quietly, "you'd expect he'd exile you to your room, but that'd be ineffective because the loss of the privilege of going out didn't mean much to you. What if he took away your book?"

I sucked on my bottom lip at that.

"That'd mean something," she said knowingly. "A grounding is a loss of privileges. Lizzie, what are your privileges?"

"You mean," I said cautiously looking at her, "like, here ... now?"

Her face was inscrutable.

"Yes," she said, "Here and now, and everywhere at all times."

"Uh," I said hesitantly, "I guess reading at quiet time?"

I tasted bitterness as I said those words: I didn't like losing that. It was the only pleasure I had. I smiled to myself: reading was my only luxury in the world now. What does that say about me? How sad is that?

"Yes, that is a privilege, ..." said Rosalie, but she didn't sound like she was agreeing with me.

She paused. "Let me pose it this way: what is a privilege, in its quiddity, that is: in and of itself?"

I'm glad she explained that word, because looking stupid to Rosalie was just _so fun_ for me.

It had to be, as I looked that way all the time to her.

I thought about this. What is a privilege? "Well," I said slowly, "a privilege is something you like, ... it's something you're given or you've earned, I guess."

"Yes," she said.

I looked at her.

She was very, very still.

I didn't like this, at all, the sense of dread was building in me the more and more unreadable and remote she became.

"Lizzie," she said quietly, "What are _your_ privileges? That is to say: what are you given, and what is yours?"

"I don't think I understand, Rosalie," I said very carefully, my heart beating a mile a minute.

"Lizzie," Rosalie said again, and she very carefully wrapped her right hand around the back of my head.

I couldn't back away from her now.

She brought her left hand to my throat, and pressed lightly.

"Do you have a right to your next breath?" she asked. "Or is it something I'm giving you, each and every breath?"

Then, before I could answer, she pressed her hand firmly against my throat, closing it.

She looked at me intently, seeing if I got her point.

I got it, all right, but what could I do? I just looked at her helplessly as she strangled me, gently, firmly ...

Relentlessly.

I thought she was just making a point, but then things started to get fuzzy around the corners of my eyes, and it started to hurt, wanting to breathe, but not being able to.

I panicked. My hands went to my throat, trying to move her hand away.

As if they could. I knew they couldn't, but knowing something is one thing, telling your body struggling for the next breath, ... that's something else entirely.

"Lizzie," Rosalie commanded coolly, "put your hands down."

My eyesight was going away, and I was struggling, trying to wrest her hand from my throat, trying to swallow a sip of air somehow.

"You don't put your hands down, you don't get that next breath," she said. "You don't have a right to it; I'm the one who gives you this next breath, I'm the one who gives you every single breath, and you won't get it until you obey."

_BREATHE! _I screamed in my head. _BREATHE! BREATHE! Oh, God! BREATHE!_

But I couldn't.

I was losing it. Would she strangle me still even if I were unconscious?

I didn't know anymore.

I put my hands down, surrendering. Begging the blackness seeping into me through my eyes to give me just one more second, _please just one more second_ of life, because I was drowning and ...

Rosalie eased the pressure on my throat, and I sucked in air through tiny, tiny air hole now reopened, sucking in hot, life-giving painful gasps of air.

Rosalie hand rested on my throat as she watched me suck in grateful gulps of air, my hands on my lap.

"Lizzie," she said, "this breath of air you're breathing? The breath of life in you? It's mine. I own it. I'm giving it to you now, and at _each and every_ breath you take. And I can take away this privilege from you, just like that. Do you understand me?"

I nodded, my chin touching her hand grasping my throat. "Yes," I gasped quickly, afraid that she would do just that.

Rosalie frowned in acknowledgement. "When you're grounded, you lose your privileges. Why? Because you've abused what was given to you. In your case, I'm giving you your life and everything in it, every second of every day, and you chose to look upon what you were given as entitlements, as something you had a right to, and furthermore to use these things to hurt me, the giver."

Rosalie removed her hand from my throat. "I'm not a patient person. I never was, but you trespassed on even the little patience I have. You lash out at me? Lizzie, you're a better person than that, and I think a period of reflection on what you should be thankful for will give you a better perspective."

She gave me a hard look. "So, you're grounded, which entails a loss of _all_ privileges, including the very next breath of air you wish to take."

She placed her hand back on my throat, and I involuntarily gasped, the sucked in as much air as possible, holding my breath in anticipation of her strangling me again.

Her hand did not press itself against my throat.

"And," she said, "you get your very first privilege back: I will permit you to breathe."

She put her hands back down to her sides. "... for now," she added darkly. "Don't abuse this privilege, yes?"

"Okay," I said humbly.

Rosalie's eyes narrowed angrily, and she twisted her head to one side, regarding me through slitted eyes.

"Yes," I added quickly, as 'okay' didn't seem to be the right answer.

"Good," she said.

"So, I'm grounded," I stated, and asked, but I knew the answer already.

"Yes," she said.

"For how long?" I wondered. Was it for a week? a month? a year? the rest of my life?

"For as long as I want," she said coolly.

I looked down at my hands. She sounded ... distant, cold. Angry.

"Rosalie," I asked, ashamed, "are you angry with me?"

"Fur-i-ous," she said quietly, but enunciated each syllable with a particularly forceful emphasis.

She was quietly _fur-i-ous._

"Oh," I said.

I bit my lip, and closed my eyes for a second.

I knew this feeling. I tried not to think about it, about me. _Don't cry,_ I told myself. _Don't cry._

"Will you ..." I asked. "Will you ever forgive me?"

Her answer surprised me. "I already have," she said calmly.

I looked up from my hands into her eyes. "You have?" I asked, confused.

"Yes," she said.

"But you're angry with me?"

"Yes," she said, "furious with you, in fact."

"But you ..." I looked down at my hands again. "Me confused." I said humbly.

Rosalie reached up gently and brushed my hair out of my eyes. "You are such a _child!"_ she murmured, sounding awed.

I shrugged, but it was helpless, not nonchalant, and a tear fell into my hands. I wanted to say a sarcastic _'thanks!'_ to show I could be flip about my inadequacy, but I couldn't even manage that.

"My baby," Rosalie sighed. "I am angry with you, but I am not ruled by my anger. I can be angry for what you did, and I can weigh that in balance, and forgive you, in spite of my anger, even in my anger."

"But you do forgive me?" I asked.

"Yes," she said.

"And I'm still grounded?"

I just had to check.

"Yes," she said.

"Okay," I said. "Uh, ... may I get dressed now, please?"

Rosalie tilted her head to one side.

"No."

I looked back at her.

"No?"

I could feel myself breathing. I could hear her talking and me talking. Some of this should have made sense, right?

It didn't. It felt, to me, like I was on a stage in a play written by somebody who had taken too many hits from his opium pipe and had totally lost grip on reality.

I was in a surreal play, and I didn't know any of the rules, and nothing made sense anymore.

"Lizzie, the clothes you wear, are they yours? No. I bought them, and I gave them to you to wear. Have you been grateful for this privilege?" she asked pointedly.

"Yes, Rosalie, yes, I was ... I am ..." I said quickly.

"Were you even aware that they clothes you have been wearing, each day, were a privilege, or did you just assume them as a right, provided to you after you bathed, in whose water? using whose shampoo and soap? dried in whose towels?"

I felt her eyes on me.

"I ..." I said weakly. "I'm grateful, Rosalie. I'm grateful."

"All these things I provided. Did I have to? Did I have to provide a single thing for you?"

The way she pushed her point was like she didn't hear me at all.

I looked away. "No," I said.

Her hand reached out to my chin and turned me to face her.

"And you were aware of this?" she demanded.

"Kinda," I said. "I guess."

I bit my lower lip.

Rosalie frowned. "So you were 'kinda' aware of this, but you _definitely_ took these things for granted."

"Rosalie, no!" I said quickly. "I ..."

"Tut!" Rosalie scolded.

I _tutt_ed. Which means, I guessed what I should do is keep my mouth shut.

"Well, now you won't," she said firmly.

"Oh," I said.

I breathed in a breath of air.

"So this is what you meant by 'later,' I guess." I said sadly.

"Yes," she responded with equal gravity.

"But Rosalie," I said. "I'm naked..."

I could barely whisper the words. I felt so exposed. So small. So ashamed.

"Yes, you are," she said so calmly.

And the thing is ... she was, too.

But the difference between us was that she was absolutely beyond caring about the fact that she was naked. No, she was actually clothed in her complete self-confidence. If I said to her, 'Rosalie, you're naked ...' she would've just shrugged and said, 'So?' ... like what did that mean to her and why should she care, but when I said that _I_ was naked, all I wanted to do was to shrivel up and die, and each second I didn't just wither away and disappear was a second of agonizing shame and embarrassment to me.

"I..." I said finally.

Rosalie waited.

I looked away.

Her hand again, on my chin.

"Yes?" she demanded, looking into my eyes.

"I don't know what to say," I said.

"Yes, you do," she said.

"The thing is, ..." I said, "I don't. I can't say, 'you can't do this!' because ... you can."

"But it isn't fair, is it, sweetie?" she asked gently.

"But you know that already, Rosalie, and you just don't care, do you?" I said, swallowing.

"Hm," she said, considering. "Yes, and no. Yes, I already knew this, and no, I _do_ care, otherwise I wouldn't bother to do any of this."

I blinked. "So you're doing this to me _because_ _you care?" _I asked in shock.

Rosalie nodded. "More precisely, I'm _not _doing what's fair."

"Uh, what?"

She just said she's not being fair? And she knows it? And it's _because she cares?_

Rosalie blew out a long breath. "What's fair, baby?" she whispered.

"Well, firstly, ..." I began angrily.

Her hand flashed up.

"Baby," she said softly. "Fair is this: if you had said 'fuck you,' to a fellow student at your school — let's say your nemesis, Kristen Kuntz, yes? — what would your school principal have done?"

I looked away. "Expelled me," I said eventually.

"Yes," she said, "just like I would've been expelled from the Columbia academy for girls back in Rochester if I were caught saying those words. But that wouldn't've been all, would it've been?"

I shook my head. "No," I said.

"They'd call in your parents, wouldn't they?" she prompted.

"Yeah," I said, "they'd tell Pa."

I shuddered.

"And your father," she said, "would he have punished you? grounded you?"

She said these words so ... _sympathetically, _so understandingly, as if she knew the pain I would've caused to Pa, doing what I did.

"No," I said finally.

"He wouldn't have?" she asked, surprise creeping into her voice.

"No," I said sadly, "he wouldn't have, because ..."

I swallowed hard.

"Because ... he would've said ..." I breathed in a huge breath and said the words he would've said.

"'No daughter of mine would ever say that. I don't know who you are. You aren't my daughter.' And then he would've ..."

I swallowed again.

"He would've ..." I shut my eyes, and ...

The work, all this work of keeping in my tears, ... it wasn't working anymore. I sniffed, and felt two tears fall.

"He wudda, ..." I whimpered.

"He would have done what, Lizzie?" Rosalie asked gently.

"He woulda ..." I gasped then pushed it out of my so-tight chest, "He woulda put me out of the house, and closed the door behind him, and ..."

I couldn't continue.

"And cast you out, Lizzie, yes? Disown you forever, his own daughter? He would do that, just because you said two little words?" Rosalie asked again, so gently.

"Rose," I shook as I gasped in a sob of air, "you don't know us, our ... people ... out here, ... you just don't say that. Nobody says that. You say that and ... nobody will ... nobody would ..."

"You'd be shunned," she said.

"Yes," I said, sniffling, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my arm.

"You'd be cast out of your home, mid-Winter, and nobody would take you in," Rosalie said. Then she summarized so ... clinically: "You'd be dead within the week, if not that same day."

"Yeah," I said.

"Just because you said those two little words to someone else at school, yes?"

I looked away. She knew the answer already.

"So, Lizzie," Rosalie said. _"This_ is not fair, me grounding you, me stripping you of all privileges, including ones you thought you had a right to. It's not fair. But this is."

She picked me up abruptly, and we were outside in a flash.

And she threw me to the ground.

I hit the snow hard, and that hurt. But then, where the snow touched me? It started to burn, it was so cold. Montana weather? In February? It was cold, and the pain was instantaneous.

"This is justice, Lizzie," Rosalie said, standing over me, looking at me shiver in pain.

Then she turned on her heel, and went back inside, and closed the door, firmly.

And I lay in the snow, shivering. Dying.

And I got a feel of what 'fair' was.

It felt terrible.

The the door opened, and Rosalie came out, fully dressed in jeans and a button-up flannel shirt.

And I looked at her, and she looked as dressed as she did seconds ago when she was naked, because she was dressed in the aura of her own nobility.

She owned her own confidence, she owned her own sense of worth, she knew who she was, and she was completely herself, at every moment.

She sat now next to me in the snow, Indian-style.

"This, Lizzie, is mercy," she said kindly.

"You're ..." I shook violently.

What scared me now, and I was scared, was not the pain and the cold. No, what scared me now was that I was starting to feel numb.

I know what that means.

"Are you bringing me back inside?" I asked hopefully, hoping to God this lesson was over.

"No," she said sadly, "I'm being merciful by sitting beside you, watching you die."

"How ..." I asked utterly lost, "how is that merciful?"

"You won't die alone," she said simply. "You will have somebody with you until the end, instead of that that terrible, terrible loneliness that Royce consigned me to when he and his friends abandoned me in that alley to die."

"Oh," I said.

I looked up at her, shivering.

And I felt it, my life draining out into the snow.

And I thought: this is what I deserve. I say those words in school, I get expelled and disowned. I say those words as an adult to another adult, then he would have a lock-tight defense for him drawing his pistol and emptying his clip into me.

You don't say that.

I said that to Rosalie.

And here she was, sitting next to me, watching me die.

"So, Lizzie," Rosalie looked down at me. "Do you want justice? or mercy? You have both, right now."

"I ..." I said.

I couldn't curl up any tighter that I was.

It didn't do any good. The wilderness was a million times stronger than I was, and it couldn't be reasoned with.

And nor could Rosalie.

"I don't know what to say, Rosalie," I said. "I'm sorry, but ... I don't have anything."

I swallowed, looking up at perfection. "I couldn't say it's not fair, and ... Rosalie, you ... my life is in your hands. You get to decide. I can't even beg for your mercy, because ... that won't save me. Will you ... will you please ...?"

I didn't know how to ask her to save me. I didn't deserve her to. I saw that now.

I couldn't ask her to save my life: it wasn't fair and it wasn't merciful, so how could I ask?

Rosalie scooped me up out of the snow and brought me back inside.

The heat of the cabin was like a furnace, and I sucked in every drop of it through every inch of skin in my body.

"... and this is me being stupid." Rosalie said.

I shivered and clung tightly to her.

She put me on the bed.

"Lizzie," she said softly, "let go of me."

My arms wouldn't. They couldn't.

And her tone was unyielding.

Which one was going to win?

Which one was going to lose?

"Please don't ..." I begged, "please don't let me go."

"Lizzie, ..." Rosalie said, she had bent over the bed, holding me, letting my body rest on it. "My embraces ... do you have a right to them? or are they a privilege that I give you?"

My sigh shook my whole body.

"Lizzie," she said again, "let go of me. Now."

I let go.

That hurt more than the snow burning into my skin.

She wrapped me in the blanket, and sat on the bed beside me, as I shivered, as my body warmed itself again in the confines of the blanket.

Her hand rested on my forehead.

"Which is colder, Lizzie? The snow, or my hand?"

I shut my eyes.

I knew what answer she wanted me to give.

So I ignored it.

"Rosalie, why did you say you were stupid to bring me back inside?"

I felt her smile sadly.

"What do you learn, sweetie? You learn that you can ..."

She broke off suddenly.

"I wouldn't learn anything if I were dead, though," I offered timidly.

"Because you should, and do, know better, yes?" She shot right back.

I felt my body warming, and the warm air warming my insides.

I tried again. "I learned that you can, and do, forgive me?"

"Yes," she said quietly.

"That's something," I said.

"Yes," she said. "Something about which to be grateful."

"I'm grateful for that," I said.

"Warmer now?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you." I said.

"So," she said, "then I'll take this blanket of mine."

Then she pulled the blanket off me.

"Oh,"

I didn't so much say it, as the air left me in a rush.

I grabbed the pillow and wrapped myself around it, cocooning it, collapsing myself around it.

"That pillow is mine, too, Lizzie," Rosalie said.

"Oh," I said.

I didn't let it go.

Rosalie placed her hand on my arm.

"Lizzie, ..." Rosalie prompted gently, and then she waited.

I breathed in a huge breath, and breathed out a helpless, _'Oh, God!'_ and uncoiled myself from the pillow.

She took it. "Thank you," she said softly. And I felt her walk away with it and the blanket to the pile of clothes, ... that is: to the pile of _her_ clothes, no matter who they fit.

I wrapped myself into a ball, and started to cry as the full impact of my situation hit me.

I had _nothing._ Not even a blanket to cover my nakedness, and not even a cry of injustice, because justice was waiting for me right outside the cabin door, and mercy? It would be there to watch me die.

I had nothing but my misery.

Rosalie sat back down next to me.

"Lizzie, turn around. Face me now," she commanded gently.

I turned.

She reached out her hand and brushed my cheek.

"Who's tears are these?" she asked, bringing her hand to her lips, and sighing in my tear.

"Yours," I said, beaten, defeated, at a total loss.

Her eyes blazed golden, and she looked ecstatic and agonized, and so, so sad as she looked at me sadly, sympathizing with my sorrowful state.

She was never more beautiful, as she was, all the time, as she breathed me into her.

"Yes," she sighed, not so much here and fierce anymore, but floating on the bed beside me, lost to her ecstasy. "They are mine."

She smiled down at me. Her smile was beautiful and terrifying.

"Lizzie," she said, "stop crying."

I sniffled.

"Stop crying now."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand.

She smiled down at me, just glowing with happiness.

"Your tears are a privilege that I allow you to have," she told me. "But not now. Now, I am going to have to hunt, and you are grounded. No privileges, and you are ... Lizzie, I know you. You are going to want to entertain thoughts. You are going to want to indulge in your indignation or wallow in your self-pity. However, your thoughts, _even your thoughts, _are now mine, and I will not allow this."

Then she asked: "What did I tell you to do while you are grounded, Lizzie?"

"Um, ..." I said.

I actually don't remember what she told me.

"I told you," she said, still glowing, "that you are to be aware of the privileges you have received and that you will receive, and to be grateful for them. So, no self-indulgent 'This isn't fair!' no wallowing 'I hate this! I hate myself!' No. Gratitude. 'I'm thankful for the air I breathe. I'm thankful for the food I eat. I'm thankful for ...' and you think of everything you can be thankful for, and then you _be thankful_ for these things. And when your thoughts turn away from that toward other things, you just say to yourself, 'Rosalie doesn't want me having these thoughts. Rosalie wants me to be grateful. I'm grateful for ...'"

She gazed down at me, lovingly, so under the spell of my tear she breathed in. "Do you understand me, Lizzie?"

"Yes," I said quietly.

"You will do this," she ordered.

"Yes." I said.

She smiled. "Good."

She got up, took a step toward the door, but then stopped.

"Lizzie, ...?" she said to the door.

"Yes?"

She turned back.

"You will do what I say?"

"Yes?"

I 'asked' my answer, because I was confused. I already said 'yes' ... why was she making doubly sure now?

"Lizzie ..."

She just stood there, staring down at me.

Then she joined me in the bed and wrapped me in her arms, putting my head into her shoulder, the flannel felt soft, and her sweet scent of the slightest hint of rose amid the powerful smell of honeysuckle was intoxicating.

Intoxicating, like my tears were for her.

And she wrapped me in her legs, and the denim felt ... well, rough, but it felt real, solid, reassuring.

"When I go hunting, I come back and find you dead, strangling yourself in your sheets, and I really don't like that at all," she said quietly, an undercurrent of anger rumbled in her voice.

"Is that why you took away the blanket?" I asked.

"No," she said, "I took it away because there is nothing to hide you from yourself now. There is nothing you can say is yours, so everything you receive is now palpably a gift to you. But that's not my point now. My point is that if I come back and you are dead ..."

Silence.

Silence for a long time.

"Rosalie, ..." I said quietly. "Rose, I didn't do that on purpose. I woke up, and the sheets ... I was choking. I couldn't help it."

"I don't care," Rosalie said forcefully. "You have no privileges now but the air you're breathing, yes?"

"Well, ..." I said.

_"Yes?"_ she demanded harshly.

"Yes," I said.

"No," she said.

I sighed.

"You do not have the privilege of breathing now," she explained. "You have the _responsibility _to do so. I am giving you the privilege of breathing, but it is mine to give you, and you had better take care of what is mine, because otherwise, I will be very, _very_ angry, and you will feel the brunt of that anger."

"Even if I'm dead?" I asked carefully.

"Again, sweetie, I don't care," she enunciated slowly and forcefully. "I will wake you from the dead if I have to, and then you will really regret your disobedience for quite some time. Am I clear?"

She held me tightly as she said this.

I held her tightly back.

"Crystal," I said.

I tried not to be snide.

"Excellent," she said.

She sighed into my hair.

"Baby," she said with regret. "One more thing."

She extricated herself from me, and easily at that, no matter how tightly I tried to hold onto her.

She went to the bathing supplies and got the still-wet bar of soap.

And came to me.

I hung my head.

"Baby, ...?" she said.

"No, Rose," I pleaded, _"please!"_

"Baby, open your mouth," she said.

I closed my eyes, shaking my head.

"I won't ask again," she said, finality ringing in her voice.

I hugged myself into myself. I ducked my head between my knees. I wasn't trying to be rebellious, but I couldn't take anymore.

Rosalie's hand snaked to the null space between my chin and my chest and my knees, and she grasped my jaw, lifting my head up and forcing my mouth open.

"Nawwwhhh!" I whined, but I was silenced immediately by the soap going into my mouth, all the way.

Then Rosalie pulled the soap out a bit, then pushed it back in.

She was washing out my mouth. Literally.

I felt the lather from the soap building up in my mouth and coating my tongue.

I swallowed, involuntarily, a big gulp, and then the soap coated my throat and I felt it oozing down into my tummy.

Now I know what soap tastes like. It tastes _awful!_

With one firm shove, Rosalie pushed the soap all the way into my mouth, forcing it wide open around the soap and my back teeth clamped down onto it, locking it into place, locking it into my mouth.

I swallowed another involuntary gulp of soap, and the tears of disgust flowed from my eyes.

I looked up at Rosalie towering over me. So imposing. So righteous.

"Baby," she said, "you leave that soap in there. _I'll_ be the one to take it out when I return, do you understand me?"

I nodded sadly. "Yehhs, nndurstannd," I mouthed around the soap as best I could.

Tears didn't hit the pillow, because Rosalie had taken that away from me.

"Stop crying," she ordered firmly.

I nodded again and sniffled.

"Baby, I ..."

Rosalie placed her hand, gently, on my forehead.

I looked up at her, and swallowed another huge gulp of soap and grimaced as I tasted it and felt it slide down my throat.

Rosalie's eyes shifted away.

"I have to go," she said finally. "I'll be back ... as soon as I'm able."

She removed her hand from my head, and she moved to the door, quickly.

She was out the door, closing it behind her.

She didn't look back.


End file.
